rcte2p@menudo.uh.edu (Paul Stephen Sears) (11/05/90)
Can someone explain what .hqx files are? I understand them to be some type of compression for file transfer but how do I un-"hqx" them? If there is a utility for this can someone tell me where, perferably a ftp site. Thank you... -- Paul Sears The Univ. of Houston |"The greater an individual's power Student of the College of Technology | over others, the greater the evil that RCTE2P@Jetson.uh.edu *** | might possibly originate with him." RCTE2P@menudo.uh.edu * * * | - PROPAGANDA, from A Secret Wish (CD)
c60a-cz@danube.Berkeley.EDU (Donald Burr) (11/05/90)
In article <1990Nov5.040718.5779@menudo.uh.edu> rcte2p@menudo.uh.edu (Paul Stephen Sears) writes: >Can someone explain what .hqx files are? I understand them to be some >type of compression for file transfer but how do I un-"hqx" them? If >there is a utility for this can someone tell me where, perferably a ftp >site. Thank you... Ok, here's the deal. Programs and documents you create don't contain JUST strait ASCII codes; they contain a lot of nasty control characters. So if you try to straight ASCII upload or post files on the network, they won't come out right, since a lot of mailers, netnews posting prorams, etc. either choke on, or strip out, the control characters in a file. This is where .hqx files come in. .hqx files are created by a program called BinHex, which is public domain (I believe), and can be obtained on various FTP sites (sumex-aim.stanford.edu might have it), and also on BBS's. also, some other programs (BinHqx DA, StuffIt Classic 1.5.1, StuffIt Deluxe, etc) can encode/decode BinHex files. Basically, what BinHex does, is it converts all the nasty control characters in a file into ASCII characters. Thus, you get a file that has NO conrol characters in it, and thus won't choke your mailer programs and such. Thus you can send it all over the Internet, with no problems. The person on the other end simply either Xmodem downloads the file, or they can even ASCII capture the file (if they have a clear enough line), and they run BinHex or StuffIt or whatever, de-BinHex the file, and all the control characters get restored in the file, just like they're supposed to be. Any more questions? Need something clarified? Feel free to ask, and I'll do my best to answer. ______________________________________________________________________________ Donald Burr, c60a-cz@danube.Berkeley.edu | "I have a seperate mail-address University of California, Berkeley | for flames and other such nega- Majoring in Computer Science | tive msgs; it's called /dev/null."