Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!sjsca4!greg
From: greg@sj.ate.slb.com (Greg Wageman)
Newsgroups: comp.graphics
Subject: Re: Comp.graphics.images
Message-ID: <1989Nov27.235714.25227@sj.ate.slb.com>
Date: 27 Nov 89 23:57:14 GMT
References: <8911212014.AA06822@ironwood.cis.ohio-state.edu>
Reply-To: greg@sj.ate.slb.com (Greg Wageman)
Organization: Schlumberger ATE, San Jose, CA 95110
Lines: 33

Opinions expressed are the responsibility of the author.

In article <8911212014.AA06822@ironwood.cis.ohio-state.edu> dnwiebe@CIS.OHIO-STATE.EDU (Dan N Wiebe) writes:
>------
(I wrote:)
>The uuencoded and compressed versions of the GIF images, while smaller
>than the uncompressed, uuencoded versions, are still about 25% larger
>than the pure GIF data.
>------
>
>	This is probably just because I'm dense, or something, but what
>good is a compressed uuencoded file?  Uuencode converts an 8-bit file
>to a 7-bit file so that it can be sent through mail or some other ASCII
>service, right?  Since this makes a file both larger *and* unusable
>(you have to uudecode it first), it would seem to me that the only reason
>for the existence of a uuencoded file would be transmission, and once that
>was done, it would be uudecoded to shrink it back down and make it useful.

Well, yes and no.  A GIF file would, as you say, be uuencoded and
posted uncompressed.  However, the news software routinely compresses
news articles before transmission.  The purpose of the experiment was
to see if the compression would make up for the loss due to
uuencoding, and the answer seems to be "no".

This means that the space required for posting binary images to a
newsgroup is greater than that required for binary FTP access, even
allowing for transmission-time compression.


Copyright 1989 Greg Wageman	DOMAIN: greg@sj.ate.slb.com
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