bet@ecsvax.UUCP (08/09/84)
I think I am the one who started off this "despicable practice". I
hadn't thought that anyone would object, and confess to surprise. In
fact, as you said, binaries are better than nothing at all, and as far
as I know binaries were all there were for these things.
HOWEVER, uuencode is TRASHED by netnews!!! It works fine for mail and
uucp, but somebody in some news software trims trailing blanks, which
clobbers the file. I have been meaning to write a quick little shell
script to append a printing character to each line, and another to
remove these, so that news won't corrupt the files, but if uuencoded
posting are offensive flame-drawers I won't bother. So what's the
verdict?
Personally, I think net.sources is appropriate. It isn't a rule that I
know of that anything posted there must be portable source; these things
are useful to a sufficient body of users to make individual mailings
expensive; uuencode recently came over the net so everybody can be
expected to have it. All that is needed beyond uudecode is a binary
download facility to snarf the stuff to the target micro, and most
installations have umodem or some such equivalent. I'm for continuing
this approach AS SOON AS I get the news-bug kludge script written.
Bennett Todd
...{decvax,ihnp4,akgua}!mcnc!ecsvax!betlauren@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein) (08/10/84)
I see nothing wrong with the practice, particularly for programs where the source simply is not available. I've found a number of items to be of use already. However, perhaps what we need is net.objects to avoid confusion? --Lauren--
bass@dmsd.UUCP (John Bass) (08/11/84)
I for one suggest that net.sources REMAIN net.sources and NOT degrade into net.binaries for every micro system under the sun ... we already have net.micro.* for JUST THAT! Most folks archive net.sources because it generally has things that can be modified for what every system ... few archive net.micro.* because of ... Please lets post sources if you want to share something ... maybe more than a small minority will be able to use the result or your hard labor. John Bass
rmr@sdcsvax.UUCP (Robert Rother) (08/12/84)
Well excuuuuuse me. The fact that I got over 50 requests from over 22 sites
for the program that apparently started this whole mess, and since I KNOW many
times replies get dropped on the floor, I felt the program was of GENERAL
interest.
Now I have been reading news on this net for at least 2 1/2 years so I don't
consider myself new to what goes on. Very few people have ever seen messages
from me mainly beacuse I am patient and I know how to use the 'n' key. I
sent that program out beacuse over the past 2 1/2 years I have learned alot
from the many kind people out there who have spent many hours spreading
information and their hard work. This was just my way of hopfully saying
thanks.
As for the inappropriate nature of the posting. Many times I have not saved
things sent out over the net because I currently didn't need it, only to find
that within a short period of time I needed it. Micros are becoming very
common (even to people who have access to a UNIX machine) and I had found
the program useful.
Sorry if I bored you with this note, I'll just crawl back into my hole.
Robert Rother
sdcsvax!/dev/null
--
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Robert Rother
UUCP: sdcsvax!rmr ARPA: rother@seismo
seismo!rother