fsb@vitro.com (Steve Brailsford) (11/30/90)
I didn't see any discussion groups about the comp.binary
groups, so I'll ask here. How come we can't have one program,
hopefully, uudecode, to convert binary formats? The MAC uses
something called BINHEX and apple2 uses who knows what?
I, being on a UNIX machine, would like to do what I do for the
Amiga and most PC groups. Use uudecode from NN and then upload
the file to a BBS or ftp it to one of our other machines on
our network. Is there some kind of problem with MAC binary
format that it can't be handled with uudecode?
--
Steve Brailsford Usenet: uunet!media!vitro!fsb
Vitro Corporation Compu$erve: 73427,1466
14000 Georgia Ave. Voice: (301) 231-1481
Silver Spring, MD 20906kremer@cs.utwente.nl (Harro Kremer) (12/05/90)
In article <1990Nov30.133440.1919@vitro.com>, fsb@vitro.com (Steve Brailsford) writes: [..] |> How come we can't have one program, |> hopefully, uudecode, to convert binary formats? Before agreeing on a specific program, let's agree on its requirements first. I think the encoded files must be such that they can be mailed using Email. Thus the following things are not allowed: 1) curly braces may not occur. Some mailhandlers replace them 2) preferably each line has the same length 3) lines may not contain leading or trailing spaces, as they might be removed 4) lines may not start with a dot as they might be duplicated 5) the encoded file should be a small as possible. Are there any more things a crippled mail-handler might do to our files? I have no knowledge of any MAC or MS-DOS based programs. Of the UNIX programs uuencode and btoa I know they don't satisfy the requirements above. uuencode doesn't satisfy 3); btoa doesn't satisfy 4). +----------------------------------------------------------+ | Harro Kremer | | Dept. of Computer Science | | University of Twente | | P.O. Box 217 Email: kremer@cs.utwente.nl | | 7500 AE Enschede voice: +31 53 89 2819 | | Netherlands fax : +31 53 33 3815 | +----------------------------------------------------------+