farren@hoptoad.UUCP (04/07/87)
In a previous article, I defended the practice of ARCing files first, then
uuencoding the arc and posting it. Several people, notably John Gilmore
and Mike Meyer, claimed that this would be inefficient, since news compresses
data as it is sent. Rather than take this statement unsupported (and, because
I thought I was right!), I ran a test. I selected nine files, at random,
from /usr/local. They were mostly binary, but a couple of text files got in.
I then processed them in two ways. First, I ARCed them, and uuencoded the
resulting .ARC files. I then compressed the resulting files, to simulate what
news does, and recorded the resulting file sizes. Next, I uuencoded them
without using ARC, and compressed the uuencoded files. I then compared the
file sizes with the original, ARCed/uuencoded/compressed file sizes.
I lose. In only two cases was the ARCed/uuencoded/compressed file smaller
than the uuencoded/compressed file, and both of those were files less than
2K long in the original. The larger the original file, the worse the
discrepancy, with the largest file 25% larger when ARCed than when not.
I'm a believer now. Don't ARC binaries. Just uuencode them, and post that.
--
----------------
"... if the church put in half the time on covetousness
Mike Farren that it does on lust, this would be a better world ..."
hoptoad!farren Garrison Keillor, "Lake Wobegon Days"sean@ukma.UUCP (04/08/87)
In article <1968@hoptoad.uucp> farren@hoptoad.UUCP (Mike Farren) writes: >I'm a believer now. Don't ARC binaries. Just uuencode them, and post that. That may result in a few saved bytes for Usenet, but it will inconvenience a lot of users. ARC does two things: archiving and compressing. For those that use xmodem, they must download sources one file at a time. With ARC, they can do one transfer and get the whole mess. AND it insures that file padding will not invalidate an executable binary. One must also consider that all sites do not send compressed news. You would save time for these sites by using ARCed files. It's really up to the poster what format he wants to use. If there's binaries, or more that a couple of files, I'll probably arc sources. I've downloaded tons of files, and that's the format I'd rather see them in. It also saves time downloading from the Usenet host to my Amiga. Sean -- =========================================================================== Sean Casey UUCP: cbosgd!ukma!sean CSNET: sean@ms.uky.csnet ARPA: ukma!sean@anl-mcs.arpa BITNET: sean@UKMA.BITNET
mwm@eris.BERKELEY.EDU (Mike (My watch has windows) Meyer) (04/08/87)
In article <6261@ukma.ms.uky.csnet> sean@ms.uky.csnet (Sean Casey) writes: >In article <1968@hoptoad.uucp> farren@hoptoad.UUCP (Mike Farren) writes: >>I'm a believer now. Don't ARC binaries. Just uuencode them, and post that. Better yet, post sources! I don't run binaries off the net; I remember ARF. >That may result in a few saved bytes for Usenet, but it will inconvenience a >lot of users. ARC does two things: archiving and compressing. For those that >use xmodem, they must download sources one file at a time. With ARC, they >can do one transfer and get the whole mess. AND it insures that file padding >will not invalidate an executable binary. Wrong on two counts. ARC is a major pain in the ass, as it won't handle directory trees. Try getting the mg1b sources, arcing and downloading all of them. On the other hand, tar does handle trees, and you can find an AmigaDOS program to dismantle them on Fish disk 53. This allows you to download trees, as opposed to directories. And it works through xmodem, the same as ARC does. Ergo, posting uuencoded tar'ed binaries buys the receiver more convenience than uuencoded arc'ed, and doesn't cause the double-compression gotcha that arc does. >One must also consider that all sites do not send compressed news. You >would save time for these sites by using ARCed files. Such sites are foolish, and almost certainly aren't paying long-distance phone bills. Remember, it's not the time on the phone, it's the multi-thousand dollar phone bills. >It's really up to the poster what format he wants to use. If there's binaries, >or more that a couple of files, I'll probably arc sources. I've downloaded >tons of files, and that's the format I'd rather see them in. It also saves >time downloading from the Usenet host to my Amiga. Sigh. There was a time when being polite on the net was common. People tried to minimize the load on the sites paying for netnews, and to minimize the number of people who saw their articles and weren't interested in them (among other things), and a reminder when you did things that violated those was appreciated. Now, it's "I'll sell my car on both ba.wanted and ba.general; that'll reach more people" and "I'll post arc'ed files, that'll save me a little upload time" and "Who is this assh*le telling me not to crosspost to net.micro and net.micro.ibm-pc?" Maybe NNTP will save ABUSENet. Then again, maybe people not worried about "a few extra bytes" (kilobytes is more like it) will manage to bury it in spite of the net wizards best efforts. <mike -- Here's a song about absolutely nothing. Mike Meyer It's not about me, not about anyone else, ucbvax!mwm Not about love, not about being young. mwm@berkeley.edu Not about anything else, either. mwm@ucbjade.BITNET