turner@daisy.UUCP (D'arc Angel) (11/29/87)
Introduction:
This document outlines the purpose of comp.sources.atari.st and
comp.binaries.atari.st; how to 'unpack' postings; and how to submit files
to the groups for posting. These groups are moderated by me in my copious (:-)
spare time and turn around may be a little slow. Don't be afraid to send me
mail asking me what the ^$%# happened to your submission. Every program
submitted to me is tested to the best of my abilities and hardware. If I can
not fully test a submission, because I don't have appropriate hardware or I
don't know the language being used, I will put a caveat in the posting
warning the user to that effect.
Purpose:
The moderated groups were created to lessen the traffic created
by multiple postings (as in: I lost part n, could someone repost it)
and to provide a relatively reliable posting. To that end I download
every posting; compile it (if appropriate); test it; document it (if
necessary); checksum it; repackage it; locally post it; unpackage it
and recheck the posting; and finally post it to the net. This process
is fairly time consumming and therefore frustrating to the poster
who would (very reasonably) like to see their posting see the light
of day as soon as possible; have patience !
Contents:
Each posting consists of the following parts:
Subject line with usage information
Editor's note
checksums
the posting
1. Subject line
The subject line consists of a 3 field code which gives
some information on the contents of the posting and a
quick summary of what is in the posting. The 3 fields are
seperated by ':'s and may in turn contain subfields
seperated by ';'s. The first field is a 3 digit code that
describes the language in which the posting is written.
Some examples are:
bin - the posting is a binary (executable) only
mwc - the posting is written in Marc Williams C
mmc - Megamax C
drc - DRI (Alcyon) C
bas - basic
pps - Personal pascal
dra - Alcyon assembler
mwa - Marc Williams assembler
mad - MadCap assembler
pro - prolog
doc - documentation file (no executables)
(I will add more as the need arises)
The second field contains the resolutions in which the program
will run, if it can run in more than 1 resolution, then they
seperated by ';'s. The values are:
all - all resolutions
b&w - monochrome
low - low res color
med - hi res color
The third field lists the filters that need to be run to
'unpackage' the posting, that is get it into a format that
can be used on the ST. If more than one filter needs to be
used they are seperated by ';'s and listed in the order that
they must be executed. The values are:
shar - Un*x Bourne shell
uue - uudecode
arc - arc
- (empty) posting is usable as is
for example, uue;arc would mean that you must first run the
uudecode program on the posting, then run the arc program on
the output of the uudecode program.
Editor's Note:
This is a (hopefully) quick note from me explaining what the
posting is about, any gotcha's that I found in using it, etc.
Checksums:
These are the checksums for each part (if more than one) of
the complete posting
How to 'unpackage' postings:
The 2 most popular methods for packaging posting are shar format for
sources and uue;arc for binaries. To unpack a shar format simpley
remove the leading headers (usually marked by a line stating 'run
sh on everything that follows...') and trailing signatures and run
the stripped file thru the Un*x sh command (sh filename). This will
unpack and check each file in the shar. If you are not running Un*X
then you need to manually seperate the parts with an editor (what a
pain).
To unpackage a uue;arc submission execute the following steps:
1. look at the line 'begin part ...' in the first (or only) part
and save the file as that filename with the file extension '.uue'
you need not change the file as uudecode ignores everything before
the 'table' line. If the posting has more than 1 part name then the
file extension to part 1 should be '.uaa' and the filename for part
2 'filename.uab', part 3 'filename.uac' etc. For example a 3 part
posting of the gulaam.ttp program would be saved as:
gulaam.uaa
gulaam.uab
gulaam.uac
It should be noted that this is for the 'official' uudecode program
from John-Pierre Dumas that is posted periodically to the group
comp.binaries.atari.st. Other versions of uudecode may be used but
their naming conventions may be different. The other most popular
form of file naming would name the above 3 parts:
gulaaa.uue
gulaab.uue
gulaac.uue
In general the naming convention is only a formality, the basic
format of a uue file is understood by all flavours of uudecode.
2. type 'uudecode filename.uue' for single part postings or
'uudecode filename.uaa' for multiple parts, the other parts will
be automatically linked in.
3. you should now have a file named 'filename.arc' (gulaam.arc in
our example), type 'arc x filename' to extract the pieces of the
original posting.
4. that's it.
The chicken or the egg:
One major problem has been how to post the uuen/decode binaries
without putting them into a uue format. To that end a uudecode.bas
program is periodically posted to the net, this is a 'bootstrap'
version which will decode the uuencode... (you get the idea).
This program does NOT understand anything before the 'begin' line
or after the 'end' statement.
How to submit files:
mail submissions to:
....{decwrl,ucbvax}!imagen!atari!turner
PLEASE include documentation as to what the file contains, how to
use it, etc. If it is a binary file, remember to uuencode it first
as most mailer can't handle binary (non-ascii) characters.
Toolkit:
The full set of programs used in decoding files from the moderated
groups are:
uudecode.bas - basic program used to decode the real uudecode.ttp
uudecode.ttp - decode encoding postings
uuencode.ttp - encode binaries for posting
arc.ttp - archive/dearchive groups of binaries files
cksm.ttp - checksum a file
Archives:
At this time, all files posted to both moderated groups are also
mailed to ...umix!hyc (Howard Chu) who maintains an archive
available to both usenet and ARPAnet. Contact him for more details.
--
C'est la vie, C'est la guerre, C'est la pomme de terre
...{decwrl|ucbvax}!imagen!atari!daisy!turner (James M. Turner)
Daisy Systems, 700 E. Middlefield Rd, P.O. Box 7006,
Mountain View CA 94039-7006. (415)960-0123