singer@endor.harvard.edu (Jon Hueras) (04/12/88)
There has been some talk here recently about Red Ryder's incompatibility with macget/macput. It is all quite true, and it is for that reason that I undertook quite a while ago to modify macget and macput from its sources to make it compatible. Before I go on, let me explain what the problem is. It has nothing to do with XModem, which both MacTerminal 1.1 and Red Ryder are equally capable of handling. It has to do with the protocol used on top of XModem by each to effect binary Mac file transfers. Red Ryder uses the fairly widespread MacBinary standard for this, a standard that either didn't exist when MacTerminal 1.1 was written or was not so widespread. I suspect that some nascent version of MacBinary must have existed at the time because what MacTerminal 1.1 does is almost exactly the same. However, what is accomplished in a single XModem transfer in MacBinary is done in three separate XModem transfers via MacTerminal: one transfer for the file's "header", one for the data fork, and one for the resource fork. MacBinary accomplishes the same thing in one XModem transfer by letting the header information determine how to separate the data part from the resource part. It was thus fairly trivial to modify macget/macput to merge the three transfers into one. Now, although I have had this modified software for some time, I have hesitated to post it for fear of legal entanglements. The software is, after all, copyrighted by Brown University where it was developed by one Dave Johnson. Following the copyright notice are the words "may be used but not sold without permission," whereby I took it as OK to modify and use as I see fit. Beyond that, I felt it better to be safe than sorry. OK, call me a weanie... So now I feel it my duty help others in distress. But I still want to do it right. I'll try to contact Dave J. at his last known address, but I'm not at all confident I'll find him there (if he did this as a student, he's probably not there anymore). Beyond that, I need help. I am not a net guru. Can someone out there find Dave (perhaps Dave himself) or someone at Brown who can bless the release of this software to the world? Alternatively, if someone can convince me that I'm being unnecessarily paranoid (and I mean REALLY convince me), I'll reconsider. Jon Hueras Symantec/THINK Technologies