douglas@reed.UUCP (P Douglas Reeder) (03/03/88)
Will someone please explain fully what exactly the EXECUTIONER, BLU, DDD and all those other packing/encoding/bundling/splitting programs do, what 6 bit and 4 bit packing are, and how to recognize just what you need to turn any file back into it's original format. -- Doug Reeder USENET: ...!tektronix!reed!douglas Box 502 Reed College BITNET: douglas@reed.UUCP 3203 S.E. Woodstock 122 38' W 45 28' N, planet Earth, sol system Portland, OR 97202 `Seldon helps those who help themselves.'
unknown@ucscb.UCSC.EDU (60164000) (03/04/88)
In article <8378@reed.UUCP> douglas@reed.UUCP (P Douglas Reeder) writes: >Will someone please explain fully what exactly the EXECUTIONER, BLU, DDD >and all those other packing/encoding/bundling/splitting programs do, >what 6 bit and 4 bit packing are, and how to recognize just what you need >to turn any file back into it's original format. > I cannot explain fully what EXECUTIONER does, as I am not sure what it is. I suppose that it is the program which people use to change a file into a READABLE text file (i.e. no control characters, etc.) to send over a modem and POST as a message onto a place like this. DDD is a program that compacts a FULL DISK (with the newest version, either a 5.25" disk or a 3.5" disk) into ONE FILE. The reason this is done is so that the program can be sent via a modem over phone lines...Telecommuncations software does not USUALLY allow full-disk transfer..That type of transfer is available in ProTERM, however. (My vote as the best telecommunications software because of the many emulation modes, many transfer protocols, and it can WRITE MACROS FOR YOU or you can write your own). Usually FILES are sent however...One of the most used copy-protection schemes (seemingly used the most on Apple //s, because one of my housemates has a Mac and the other has an Amiga, and they haven't seen non-catalogable software) is to write your own DOS so you can't be cataloged through DOS 3.3 or ProDOS. Not only does DDD make it into a file, but it makes the file VERY MUCH shorter than the actual amount of data the disk contains (it PACKS the data). It's the MOST USED packing/unpacking utility around, although there are others. The newest version floating around bulletin boards and AEs supports ProDOS -and- file packing (just making files shorter for archival purposes, but they have to be UNPACKED before they're runnable again). Hope that little lesson helped!