chuq@sun.UUCP (05/30/86)
My apology in advance for the cross-posting to net.sources.mac, but this
is something that directly relates to that newsgroup. All followups should
be sent to net.micro.mac only (it will automatically if your software isn't
broken...)
I recently posted two sets of software to net.sources.mac -- a set of
files for the Boston II Font and the ADVSYS adventure package. I'm quite
dismayed at the number of people who have written back and told me that
they are broken at their site. I know that the package worked when it
left my machine, and there have been places on the net where it has worked,
so it isn't a global problem.
It seems to me, thnking back, that there hasn't been a single significant
posting to n.s.m for a while that hasn't been garbaged somewhere. BinHexes,
unfortunately, are very suceptible to single bit/byte errors.
Now, theoretically, the transport layer (UUCP) should protect us from that.
There seem to be areas of the net, however, that have consistent failures.
I want to find out exactly how bad this is. If you downloaded either the
Boston fonts or the ADVSYS game, will you PLEASE send me mail and tell me
whether the download worked or not. If you can, please send me the header
to one of the messages. From this, I will try to extrapolate what
percentage of the net is being munged and what sites are likely to be
doing it.
Frankly, I'm quite discouraged, to the point where I might just not bother
posting stuff in the future. If I have to try to get private copies to 10
or 15 people because the net screwed it up, it isn't worth my time -- I'll
just pop it over to info-mac on sumex and forget UUCP. Also, if this stuff
isn't working, I'm not going to make USENET volumes worse by throwing around
stuff that isn't any good.
If it turns out to be just a few sites that are bad, we can probably shine
it on. If not, we need to rethink the policy of posting BinHexed stuff -- if
it isn't doing any good, why do it? mod.mac isn't a solution, because stuff
gets garbaged regardless of its race, creed, or moderation. If we DO
have a problem, there are two solutions:
o stop posting, or
o create something better than BinHex. Rather than CRC, perhaps some kind of
ECC checksum that can rebuild the destruction if it isn't major.
This has some rather nasty implications to the rest of the net. If Mac
code is being garbaged, I think it is a good assumption that regular
messages, shars, and sources are being garbaged as well. It isn't as
critical a problem here, but if people are losing characters, words, or
paragraphs out of their postings, who can guess what it does to the context?
Comments and suggestions are welcome, but please send me the yes/no on
whether you could use that stuff and how it got to you. As it stands, I'm
not going to post any more stuff that I get my hands on until I'm sure
it isn't a wasted motion.
thanx
chuq
--
:From the lofty realms of Castle Plaid: Chuq Von Rospach
chuq%plaid@sun.COM FidoNet: 125/84 CompuServe: 73317,635
{decwrl,decvax,hplabs,ihnp4,pyramid,seismo,ucbvax}!sun!plaid!chuq
The first rule of magic is simple. Don't waste your time waving your hands
and hoping when a rock or a club will do -- McCloctnik the Lucidtim@ism780c.UUCP (Tim Smith) (05/31/86)
Part of the problems might be due to the size of source postings. I used to send mac stuff from callan to cithep, by mail, and there would be errors. The most common error was for some random part of some random line to be replaced with part of the "From" line. I never saw this happen on small things. I never found out where this was happening, but I wouldn't be surprised to find out that whoever was having trouble with large mail messages would also have trouble with large usenet postings. Maybe we need a format for postings that puts a line number and a CRC on each line. Then when a posting gets garbled, it might not be too expensive to repost just the lines that got garbled. If we are lucky, it is only one or two machines that are trashing things, so that everyone will get the same lines garbled. -- Tim Smith sdcrdcf!ism780c!tim || ima!ism780!tim
6089247@pucc.BITNET (Michael Schmelzer) (05/31/86)
In article <3813@sun.uucp>, chuq@sun.UUCP writes: >I want to find out exactly how bad this is. If you downloaded either the >Boston fonts or the ADVSYS game, will you PLEASE send me mail and tell me >whether the download worked or not. If you can, please send me the header >to one of the messages. From this, I will try to extrapolate what >percentage of the net is being munged and what sites are likely to be >doing it. I had no problems. I joined the three parts together, downloaded the file, and it BinHexxed smoothly. Thanks! (Please don't stop posting!)
spry@uiucdcs.CS.UIUC.EDU (06/01/86)
<One from me for a change!>
To Chug and the rest of the net.
I also had trouble with the Boston II fonts. After concatenating the version
for MacWrite together and running it through xbin I got a CRC error.
I then tried the older standby of downloading the .hqx file as a text file
and running Binhex4.0 on it. It converted correctly! As far as I could tell
the fonts were all right since I used them to reformat and print the
documentation. They installed properly and appeared to be undamaged.
The moral is DON'T ASSUME THAT A POSTING IS BROKEN BECAUSE OF A CRC ERROR
FROM XBIN! It may be that xbin isn't as robust as everyone assumes. I have
had many CRC errors from xbin that could be avoided by downloading the *.hqx
file to my Mac and using Binhex4.0 there to convert it.
One last note about xbin. It often gives a bad char message if all the
characters aren't stripped off the end of the file. I have always ignored
that message since the files that have it have always appear to be correct.
I don't know if this problem is responsible for all the problems with the
Boston postings. It may be that I have a bad copy of xbin (I try to keep up
with the new versions of all posting software). It may also be that a lot of
the reposting and extra mailings that are requested are due to a buggy xbin.
It would probably be helpful to chug to check if this is the case at your
site before mailing him about any "broken postings."
<Disclaimer: I am not the author of xbin. I thought Boston was nice but
didn't have all the special characters I needed. >
***>>>---------------------------------------------<<<***
***>>> The stupidest reason for buying an IBM is <<<***
***>>> because everyone else has one. <<<***
***>>> Especially if it is the only reason! <<<***
***>>>---------------------------------------------<<<***
+-----------------------------------------------+
| The above opinion is mine only and subject |
| change with the amount of sunshine. |
+-----------------------------------------------+
| I can be reached at: |
| arpa spry@a.cs.uiuc.edu |
| or spry@uiuc.ARPA |
| csnet spry@uiuc.csnet |
| usenet uiucdcs!spry |
+-----------------------------------------------+clif@intelca.UUCP (Clif Purkiser) (06/02/86)
> My apology in advance for the cross-posting to net.sources.mac, but this > is something that directly relates to that newsgroup. All followups should > be sent to net.micro.mac only (it will automatically if your software isn't > broken...) > > I recently posted two sets of software to net.sources.mac -- a set of > files for the Boston II Font and the ADVSYS adventure package. I'm quite > dismayed at the number of people who have written back and told me that > they are broken at their site. I know that the package worked when it > left my machine, and there have been places on the net where it has worked, > so it isn't a global problem. > > It seems to me, thnking back, that there hasn't been a single significant > posting to n.s.m for a while that hasn't been garbaged somewhere. BinHexes, > unfortunately, are very suceptible to single bit/byte errors. > thanx > > chuq > > > -- > :From the lofty realms of Castle Plaid: Chuq Von Rospach > chuq%plaid@sun.COM FidoNet: 125/84 CompuServe: 73317,635 > {decwrl,decvax,hplabs,ihnp4,pyramid,seismo,ucbvax}!sun!plaid!chuq I believe the reason chuq's posting get screwed up is that his signature is always appended to the end of the postings. I find that most of the people who post stuff to net.sources.mac do not have their signature lines at the end of the file. In the past I had problems with Chuq's posting until I discovered that his signature was appended to the binhexed file. Chuq cute little signature is certain to cause BinHex to give a bad CRC result. I have not yet found an automated way of downloading stuff. Currently I have to save all of the posting to a directory, then I go and strip off all the header and download information. I then have to jump to bottom of the file and check to remove the persons signature if present. Lately people have been spliting their posting into small chunks. Reconstructing these posting is very tedious and error prone. I am very appreciative of the people who post all the fantastic mac stuff to the net, but I wish they would follow a few guidlines to make life easier for those of us who download it. 1. Minimize the number of files. Use PackIt I or II if necessary. (Are there really that many sites which can not accept files greater than 64K? I am on a 80286 base Xenix machine which seems to handle large files very well despite the 64K segment limit.) 2. Put the line ----------------------------cut here------------------------------- immediately before the line "This file must be converted with BinHex" 3. Get rid of your bloody signature. I like to read peoples creative signoff lines but my mac could care less. Thanks Clif P.S. Chuq, I downloaded AdvSys without any problems. Its neat thanks for the posting. -- Clif Purkiser, Intel, Santa Clara, Ca. HIGH PERFORMANCE MICROPROCESSORS {pur-ee,hplabs,amd,scgvaxd,dual,idi,omsvax}!intelca!clif {standard disclaimer about how these views are mine and may not reflect the views of Intel, my boss , or USNET goes here. }
roman@sigma.UUCP (Bill Roman) (06/06/86)
After following this discussion, it appears to me that a lot of
people out there don't have the latest version of xbin. Could the
author please repost it? This might be a good way to break in
mod.mac.sources.
If I don't see it posted in a while, maybe I'll pull it out of my
archives and send it to the moderator myself.
--
Bill Roman {ihnp4,decvax,allegra,...}!uw-beaver!tikal!sigma!roman
Summation, Inc. (206) 486-0991