doug-merritt@cup.portal.com (05/22/88)
Thad Floryan writes: >Why not include a de-shar/unshar capability (along with directory structure >cognizance) into a terminal program as one of its "download" option >capabilities? While one is "at it", stick in de-ARC and de-ZOO too. Yeah, that would be really handy. >Doesn't anyone else see the commercial opportunity to make big $$$ here? Maybe. But then again, with the IPC servers various people are implementing, such a capability should quickly become available invisibly. With the proper server set up (such as what Tony Sumrall and I have been discussing), you could specify a special download name like "UNWRAP:df0/filename". It'd be just another filename to your terminal program, but the UNWRAP device would be a server that would de-ARC/de-shar/de-ZOO etc as appropriate. There's a potential glitch in that shar's and such often need human intervention to identify and cut at their start and end, but that could be dealt with having some interaction with UNWRAP if necessary, and it'd *still* be far more convenient than current approaches. And you wouldn't have to switch from you current favorite commercial or PD telecom package just to get this feature. I have designed such an UNWRAP device, and I'm currently working on code to implement such features via a utility, prior to converting it to be a device. I've got many of the pieces required working already. It's temporarily on the sidelines, however. I'm currently testing my printf() workalike, because Stallman (of the GNU Free Software Foundation) tells me that their original printf() volunteer can't figure out how to do %f, %e and %g using the ecvt() I wrote for them last year. Jeez...some people; ecvt() is the hard part; printf is easy! It kills me to see my donated code going to waste because some idiot is too lazy to look and see that what he needs is already done; no extra code required. Sigh. Anyway, it's a nice printf (e.g. it's user-extensible) so I expect to post an Amiga version of it at some point. And probably most of the rest of the C library, since I've reimplemented most of it for one reason or another. Aside from the GNU compiler, it might also be useful with the PD C compiler people are fooling with. Doug --- Doug Merritt ucbvax!sun.com!cup.portal.com!doug-merritt or ucbvax!eris!doug (doug@eris.berkeley.edu) or ucbvax!unisoft!certes!doug