jahayes@miavx1.acs.muohio.edu (02/06/91)
Many thanks to all those who mailed suggestions and help on my
question about successful transfer of gif images from newsgroups
to my mac. Here's a summary of the relevant steps:
1) EXTRACT the file(s) from news (or netnews, or whatever your
newsreader is), preferably stripping the headers as you go.
2) UUDECODE the extracted files. On a unix machine this is
trivial, but on other systems it may be more difficult. There
exist utilities to uudecode on VMS and VM/CMS ("ARCUTIL") systems.
A set of utilities for the mac, UMCP(tm) Tools, also exists but
may create problems.
3) Once you have the file uudecoded, transfer to the mac in the
usual way MAKING SURE YOU ARE IN BINARY MODE. If using ftp, for
example, simply specify "binary" before transferring. It should
give you a message saying that macbinary has been disabled.
4) View with your favorite viewer. I find the Giffer works the
best; it will ignore minor errors and put up as much of the image
as it can, whereas GifConverter insists on a perfect file; unlikely
after all the monkeying around and transfers.
If you transfer to your mac before uudecoding, remember you'll first
have to translate from UN*X to Mac text, an option with UMCP Tools.
I have found that the most reliable route for me with my available
systems is
1) Read the articles on our VM/CMS system, SAVE-ing them
to files.
2) Append files if necessary, then use ARCUTIL to uudecode.
3) FTP binary over our GatorBox to my mac.
4) Run next door to my secretary's computer (IIcx, 5M, COLOR!)
for viewing, using the Giffer.
I have decided to register with the Giffer, since it apparently
works better than GifConverter. The latter has the advantage of
running happily in much less than 2M RAM, but the former simply
seems more robust.
Again, thanks for all the advice and queries. It's working. You
can stop now :-).
Cheers,
Josh Hayes, Zoology, Miami University, Oxford OH 45056
jahayes@miavx1.acs.muohio.edu, @miamiu.acs.muohio.edu, @miamiu.bitnet