[net.news] Still garbling news with Compress 3.0

bytebug@pertec.UUCP (roger long) (06/29/85)

After reading that the compress that was distributed with 2.10.2 garbled
news, I upgraded to Compress 3.0 and urged the sites downstream of me to
upgrade as well.

I was recently informed by one of these downstream sites that they had
received another garbled batch.  Has anyone else notice something like
this?  Is there a bug in Compress 3.0 as well?

I'd appreciate any help that anyone could give in clearing up this problem.
-- 
	roger long
	pertec computer corp
	{ucbvax!unisoft | scgvaxd | trwrb | felix}!pertec!bytebug

joe@petsd.UUCP (Joe Orost) (07/08/85)

In article <342@pertec.UUCP> bytebug@pertec.UUCP (roger long) writes:
>After reading that the compress that was distributed with 2.10.2 garbled
>news, I upgraded to Compress 3.0 and urged the sites downstream of me to
>upgrade as well.
>
>I was recently informed by one of these downstream sites that they had
>received another garbled batch.  Has anyone else notice something like
>this?  Is there a bug in Compress 3.0 as well?
>
>I'd appreciate any help that anyone could give in clearing up this problem.

There are no known bugs in compress 3.0 of that sort.

Compress 3.0 only produces output which is compatible with that of older
versions if the "-C" flag is specified during compression.  This is
documented in the README file.  If you are sending news to sites that have
older versions of compress, you must use this flag.

In addition, files compressed with "-b16" (default) cannot be uncompressed
on a 16-bit machine.  For sending news to such machines, "-b12" must be
used.

If a compressed file gets munged by a noisy communication line, and the
error checking of the connection fails to detect the problem, the original
data will be destroyed badly - much worse than if sending plain text.

In a few weeks, compress 4.0 will be released to mod.sources.  This new
version is totally compatible with compress 3.0, but is smaller and faster.

				regards,
				joe

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