drs@bnl.UUCP (David Robert Stampf) (04/13/85)
This may be a false alarm, but I think that its worth passing on a really bad experience with some "Public Domain" software mentioned here, and in the PC-Digest mailing list. After reading so many rave reviews concerning pc-write for the PC, I decided to ftp the version sitting on UTEXAS and give it a spin. After logging on to UTEXAS-20, I learned that the code that I was interested in was in a packed format -- but not to worry, the code to unpack the file was also available. (lu.exe). No documentation - just the executable file. So... last night I ftp'd the lot over to here, and this morning used Kermit to get it down to a PC. Being a suspicious sort (particularly when it comes to transferring binary files, I decided to glance at the lu.exe file with debug -- sure enough it looked like a perfectly reasonable exe type file and holding my breath typed lu -- nothing happened and the PC required rebooting. One more chance. Typed lu and a file name and heard my monochrome display emit a piercing screech. It is now in terminal heaven. Now - its my fault for trusting anything like that (2 times yes!), but there must be other people who have had bad experiences with this sort of thing. It would seem to be far safer for everyone to agree to use one SIMPLE compression scheme, one for which source is available and certainly one for which the algorithm has been published. May I suggest the Software tools version? (Send flames to /dev/null, better schemes to net.sources) In any case, if you are going to provide a publically accessible directory, and insist on using some compression scheme, how about giving the source and perhaps even a few lines describing how to use it.