Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!shadooby!ginosko!uunet!loft386!dpi
From: dpi@loft386.UUCP (Doug Ingraham)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: Important new program: cleanit.c
Summary: Why not use btoa and atob?
Message-ID: <520@loft386.UUCP>
Date: 9 Oct 89 17:09:04 GMT
References: <3492@ast.cs.vu.nl> <2992@ndsuvax.UUCP> <3604@ast.cs.vu.nl>
Organization: Lofty Pursuits, Rapid City, SD USA
Lines: 32

In article <3604@ast.cs.vu.nl>, ast@cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum) writes:
> In article <2992@ndsuvax.UUCP> ncoverby@ndsuvax.UUCP (Glen Overby) writes:
> >I resent having to deal with uuencoded files just for Bitnet.  
> 
> On the whole, I agree with you.  However, an additional advantage of doing
> it this way is compress + uuencode saves something like 25% of the bandwidth,
> and this is going to be very large, so that is definitely worth something.
> Also, with my cleanit program and install shell script, however redundant
> they may be, the installation of 1.4b should be relatively easy since the
> computer will have to do all the work.
> 
> Andy Tanenbaum (ast@cs.vu.nl)

Why not use the btoa and atob programs that come with compress?  btoa
provides a more compact encoding than uuencode.  Is there a problem in
using btoa format on bitnet?  Here are the numbers on an example I just
tried.

original length = 82478
compress -b12	= 49454 reduction of 40%
uuencode length = 68161 expansion of 27% overall reduction of 17%
btoa length	= 62673 expansion of 21% overall reduction of 24%

It's not a lot better, but it is better.

If anyone on a bitnet site that has problems wants to try this out
I will get btoa and atob running under minix and give it a shot.

-- 
Doug Ingraham (SysAdmin)
Lofty Pursuits (Public Access for Rapid City SD USA)
uunet!loft386!dpi