Appropriateness of application notes

[dmg]

Some applications are unnecessarily large, because they use little or no compression. Are there any legal or ethical issues preventing the program description from mentioning when an app may benefit from being compressed with either AppCompactor or ArcThemALL!?

http://www.portablefreeware.com/index.php?id=1472

http://www.portablefreeware.com/index.php?id=1497

[SYSTEM]

This has been discussed already: http://www.portablefreeware.com/forums/ ... 657#p21657

I've actually decompressed an UPXed program (DShutdown) in order to reduce false positives. I think only a small amount of users would benefit if the database entries mentioned directly if compression can significantly reduce the size of the application. Storing a lot of portable applications in a small thumb drive is a bad idea in the first place.

That said, if a lot of space (say, 10 megabytes) can be saved with compression, something like

"See the comments for instructions to save disk space by compressing the application"

could, IMO, be added to the database entry.

[dmg]

That's not quite what I had in mind. I am looking at an app to see if it is both portable and good enough to add to the database. While examining it I noticed it was abnormally large. I found its size could be reduced by about 50% using AppCompactor. I simply wondered, assuming I were to add the application, if there was anything wrong with saying in the description that this particular app can benefit from compression, and possibly include links to the previously mentioned database entries.

[guinness]

I would still leave it in the comments. I think users who are active in TPFC community will have a general understanding & know how that UPX compression will dramatically reduce the size of some applications. UPX'ing is not for the average PC user, especially when they mistakenly UPX a NSIS executable!

[dmg]

Understood.

[JohnTHaller]

I would still leave it in the comments. I think users who are active in TPFC community will have a general understanding & know how that UPX compression will dramatically reduce the size of some applications. UPX'ing is not for the average PC user, especially when they mistakenly UPX a NSIS executable!

Keep in mind that the PortableApps.com AppCompactor automatically switches from the AppNamePortable directory to the AppNamePortable\App directory and skips the NSIS launcher. Plus, the PA.c AppCompactor automatically tests all files compressed with UPX to ensure they pass; when they don't the original is left alone. And we're adding AppCompactor exclusions right to the PortableApps.com Format as of yesterday so that we can more easily package apps and so that if users happen to run AppCompactor again on an app we've already compressed, they won't accidentally compress files that break:
http://portableapps.com/news/2010-08-01 ... mpator_2.0