KSBOLDUAN@amherst.bitnet (12/16/89)
Is there an archive of binhexed GIF files? i.e. available for the Mac? I've found lots of archives that have GIF files, but none of them are in .hqx format. I FTP from my VAX and then download to my Mac. I tried to do this with some of the GIF files, but it wouldn't work unless they were binhexed first. I was looking in particular at wuarchive.wustl.edu. They have hundreds of GIF files, but I can't seem to get any of them to work on my Mac. Am I mistaken or is a GIF a GIF a GIF regardless of what machine you want to view them on (IBM, MAC, AMIGA etc.) ? I guess what I'm asking is this: How can I get these files, via a VAX, to work on my Mac. Any suggestions would be helpful, and I'll summarize for the net. Please respond directly as I rarely read this newsgroup. Thanks Kevin Bolduan '91 Amherst College KSBOLDUAN@AMHERST Bitnet Address
ken@watsun.cc.columbia.edu (Ken Rossman) (12/22/89)
I've found lots of archives that have GIF files, but none of them are in .hqx format. I FTP from my VAX and then download to my Mac. I tried to do this with some of the GIF files, but it wouldn't work unless they were binhexed first. I've run into this also. I've been trying to move GIFs back and forth between some Suns here and some Mac II's, with little success so far. Am I mistaken or is a GIF a GIF a GIF regardless of what machine you want to view them on (IBM, MAC, AMIGA etc.) ? Well, I've run into a couple of problems so far with the idea that "GIF is GIF no matter where you are". One problem that you definitely have to watch out for, and this is the case with any binary file, is the method of file transfer. You have to somehow tell the program you are using not to do any funny transformations in the transfer (like CRLF's to CR's, or LF's to CRLF's, etc). The other thing that ought not to matter really, but sometimes does, depending on how the translation code is written, is the problem of byte ordering across different machine architectures. You mentioned in your letter both Mac's and VAXen. They stuff bytes in words in a different order. I can never remember which is which, but one is called "big endian", and the other is "little endian". The difference is whether the most significant byte comes first in the word or the least significant byte comes first. Problems arise here when the image translating code tries to operate on data items larger than a byte. If the code operates on a word at a time, then bytes can be reversed when moving data from a VAX to a Mac, for example. I'm still trying to figure out if this is what happened to some images that got fouled in transfer here. But I'm no Mac hacker, and that's where the images are failing now... sigh... Ken Rossman Computer Center Columbia University ken@columbia.edu ken@cunixc.bitnet ...!rutgers!columbia!ken
fleming@uxh.cso.uiuc.edu (12/22/89)
I got around this by downloading to the MAC then opening then immediatly closing a file with QUED, an open form text editor. This seemed to fix the forks. Declan
ewing@tramp.Colorado.EDU (EWING DAVID JAMES) (12/23/89)
In article <2544@cunixc.cc.columbia.edu> ken@watsun.cc.columbia.edu (Ken Rossman) writes: > I've found lots of archives that have GIF files, but none of them are in > .hqx format. I FTP from my VAX and then download to my Mac. I tried to do > this with some of the GIF files, but it wouldn't work unless they were > binhexed first. Make sure that are your file transfers are plain binary (not MacBinary) or the files willl undoubtedly get corrupted. Then, change the file type to 'TEXT' or 'GIFf' using DiskTop or ResEdit (or even QUED). Byte ordering is never a problem with GIF files since it is specified in the Spec. (Truely, a GIF IS a GIF on any machine.) Dave Ewing ewing@tramp.colorado.edu (128.138.238.33) ..!hplabs!boulder!onecom!tyvax!iftech!dave (My Mac IIx running uupc & MacOS!) AppleLink: D2408 (D2408@applelink.apple.com)