[comp.sys.mac] MacBinary

keyles@elbereth.rutgers.edu (Mike) (05/29/87)

Hi,

I run a bulletin board system for macs and have been storing files in
Binhex format. I have recently become aware that BinHex almost doubles
the size of the files, which does not help out my hard disk situation
nor does it help my users as the download time is greater. I've heard
that MacBinary is a much better way to handle it for BBS purposes (but
not E-mail). I don't know anything about Macbinary though. Can someone
please give me a few pointers and tell me what steps I need to follow
to prepare files for my system?

Thanks,

Mike
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Michael Keyles 				    UUCP   : elbereth!keyles
Rutgers University			    BITNET : 1005106@rutvm1
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dtw@f.gp.cs.cmu.edu (Duane Williams) (05/30/87)

> I run a bulletin board system for macs and have been storing files in
> Binhex format. I have recently become aware that BinHex almost doubles
> the size of the files, which does not help out my hard disk situation

The claim that binhex almost doubles the size of files is not universally
true.  Take, as an example, the Decomprime program recently distributed in
comp.binaries.mac.  The binhex file is 278,999 bytes and the unbinhexed file
is 206,431.  This is a far cry from double the size.  Binhex increased the
size of the file by 35% in this case.

Duane