aaa@mtuni.ATT.COM (Aaron Akman) (12/02/87)
A few questions on submitting/grabbing source/binaries to/from USENET: Could someone explain the various encoding programs (uu[en|de]code, shar, pk[x]arc, and so on) how do they differ, when should you expect to see which used, where to get them. I think I know some answers, but I want to make sure. Has anyone written a program that looks around for postings of source and binaries, and sends mail to the user. It's a pain to interactively readnews looking for source postings. What are the rules for posting source/binaries to the net? Can anyone post? Can one post to any newsgroup, or does the newsgroup have to have the word source (or binaries) in it? I.e. can I depend on only having to browse around in those named groups? Are there any rules for the Subject: line of a posting? I've noticed that multi-part source postings seem to have the Part X of Y stuff in the Subject: line. Is this guaranteed to be there? Why do shar files have X's in the first column of every line? -- Aaron, mtuni!aaa, 201-957-2751
gandalf@russell.STANFORD.EDU (Juergen Wagner) (12/03/87)
In article <300@mtuni.ATT.COM> you write: >A few questions on submitting/grabbing source/binaries to/from USENET: I'll be happy to answer them :-) >Could someone explain the various encoding programs (uu[en|de]code, >shar, pk[x]arc, and so on) how do they differ, when should you expect >to see which used, where to get them. I think I know some answers, >but I want to make sure. uu{en,de}code are programs to make a mere (ASCII) text file out of files containing control characters (e.g. binaries or tar files). shar (=shell archiver) packs files together into a shell scrip, and produces a large file which when executed (i.e. fed into the Bourne shell) will restore the original files again. The arc family is basically the same but does some encoding/decoding as far as I know. To transmit sources, shar is a good choice. If you want to transmit whole directories, including font files or whatever you may choose tarmail and atob/btoa, another package to convert non-ASCII files into text files. While uu??code comes with your UNIX (hopefully), shars, arcs, and tarmail are available from the USENET sources archives. >Has anyone written a program that looks around for postings of source >and binaries, and sends mail to the user. It's a pain to >interactively readnews looking for source postings. That's quite easy. If you use "rn -c" to find out whether news arrived in one of your favourite groups, you may use "rn -c 'comp.sources.misc'" to check for news in the sources group. You can run a small shell script doing exactly this, and sending mail to your account if the status of "rn" indicates new news. >What are the rules for posting source/binaries to the net? Can anyone >post? Can one post to any newsgroup, or does the newsgroup have to >have the word source (or binaries) in it? I.e. can I depend on only >having to browse around in those named groups? Anyone can post although some groups are moderated, i.e. the final decision whether your article is mailed all over the world is up to the moderator. Intelligent news readers automatically send postings to the moderator if necessary. Also read the news.* groups. You will find a policy statements and answers to many common questions in some articles there (which are reposted periodically). If not, contact your news guru (there has to be one). >Are there any rules for the Subject: line of a posting? I've noticed >that multi-part source postings seem to have the Part X of Y stuff in >the Subject: line. Is this guaranteed to be there? The subject lines you saw came from moderated news groups where the moderator organizes the postings into volumes and issues. Large files are split into several parts. Nobody guarantees the subject line to have exactly this format but it's the canonical way to do it. >Why do shar files have X's in the first column of every line? Some mailers do not like files with lines starting with a dot. Also, in shar files the separate files inside the shell script are terminated by a special end of file marker (which hopefully does not occur inside the archived file). To avoid trouble, all lines in a shell archive are preceded by a special character. I hope this helps. Regards, Juergen Wagner, gandalf@Russell.Stanford.edu Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI), Stanford CA PS: Apologies for posting this lengthy response. I tried to mail but my letter bounced back. -- Juergen Wagner, gandalf@Russell.Stanford.edu Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI), Stanford CA
creps@silver.bacs.indiana.edu (Steve Creps) (12/03/87)
In article <300@mtuni.ATT.COM> aaa@mtuni.ATT.COM (Aaron Akman) writes: >Could someone explain the various encoding programs (uu[en|de]code, >shar, pk[x]arc, and so on) how do they differ, when should you expect There is currently a discussion going on in comp.sys.ibm.pc on this very subject. Check out the articles there for starters. - - - - - - - - - Steve Creps on the VAX 8650 running Ultrix 2.0-1 at Indiana University. creps@silver.bacs.indiana.edu "F-14 Tomcat! There IS no substitute."