SEWALL@UCONNVM.BITNET (07/29/87)
Gracious Patt, it's exciting enough just tying to get a file across the maze of gateways! Seriously, my understanding is that binary files do not travel well among the nets because some (bitnet which I'm on) use EBCDIC and some (arpa for instance) use ASCII and all the translators can't be relied on to end up with the same hex once they've flipped-flopped through that once or twice. If I'm wrong, one of the mavens reading comp.sys.apple can surely correct me. Serveral of us have used kermit to move binary files among bitnet sites (IBM's running CMS & VAX's linked with J-Net). Apple II binary (or Don Elton's Apple Library Utility) do quite nicely, BUT kermit also (apparently) tries to keep track of file attributes, SO binaries that have been uploaded by kermit must be downloaded by kermit (we have SOFTERM's SOFTRANS running locally) or Apple II binary (and ALU) files won't unpack. Perhaps I can find something REALLY small to post as a binary (I'm sure readers who have Apple 2's but not with access to the system they read the info files on will just LOVE binary messages!), BUT lets here 1) some thoughts from others about it AND 2) someone authoritative (or pretentious -- it's late folks) who'll tell me I'm wrong about character translations through gateways.