Initial import of parchive-1.1, an implementation of "Parity Volume Sets",

specification 1.0 (.PAR and .Pnn files). These commonly accompany Usenet
binary postings, but the public domain format is sufficiently general to
permit other applications as well.

1 files changed, 13 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/misc/parchive/DESCR b/misc/parchive/DESCR
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000..0e1066a80d9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/misc/parchive/DESCR
@@ -0,0 +1,13 @@
+"Parchive" implements a RAID-like system for multi-part archives. Such
+archives are commonly posted to Usenet binary newsgroups. Typically, a
+poster will construct 2 to 5 parity files for a multi-part archive
+consisting of somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 to 50 equal sized parts.
+These parity files contain a Reed-Solomon encoding of the original files.
+He'll then post all of them along with the original parts, so if any number
+of those original parts are lost or corrupted in transit (up to the number
+of parity files), a receiver may reconstruct them from only that number
+of parity files.
+
+Though quickly growing in popularity for it's intended application, the
+format of the parity files is sufficiently general to be useful for other
+applicatons as well. The format itself is in the public domain.