sasaki@HARVARD.HARVARD.EDU.UUCP (03/23/87)
Carlo Mekenkamp has been distributing a pretty good utility program that allows file tranfer over networks. MFTU does two things that make file transfer easy: 1) it translates binary files into ascii text that can be copied over networks and 2) it compresses files. When performing either operation, it preserves the format of the orignal file by including a copy of the FAB in the translated files. Do both operations and you end up with a file smaller (usually) than the original that can be sent over networks without fear of bad file formats or mashed data. I have been using a compress/decompress program (a port of UNIX compress done by Martin Minow, with a binary-to-ascii backend done by me) in the past. This does a slightly better job of compressing than MFTU, but is written in C. MFTU is written in Macro-32 which means that it is usable and buildable on any VMS system. I will be using this program to distribute backup savesets over the net of Todd Aven's MAKE program as well as VMS GNU Emacs. Both of these programs will be available in the very near future on harvard for FTP. MFTU is available via anonymous FTP from harvard.harvard.edu. MFTU is in the file ~ftp/vms/mftu.com. This is a DCL archive, copy the file to your VMS system and execute "@mftu". Bitnet/jnet users should send requests to "sasaki@harvsc3". I will send the file out to you in VMSDUMP format. ---------------- Marty Sasaki uucp: harvard!sasaki Ziff Davis Technical Information Co. arpa: sasaki@harvard.harvard.edu 80 Blanchard Road bitnet: sasaki@harvunxh Burlington, MA 01803 phone: 617-273-5500