Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!samsung!xylogics!bu.edu!husc6!husc7!wichers
From: wichers@husc7.HARVARD.EDU (John Wichers)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc
Subject: Re: TidBITS 5/21/90 - Issue 6
Message-ID: <3085@husc6.harvard.edu>
Date: 30 May 90 16:47:31 GMT
References: <26616182@<4164> <71100009@p.cs.uiuc.edu>
Sender: news@husc6.harvard.edu
Reply-To: wichers@husc7.UUCP (John Wichers)
Organization: Harvard University Science Center   Cambridge, MA
Lines: 23

In article <71100009@p.cs.uiuc.edu> gillies@p.cs.uiuc.edu writes:
>I sure wish this tidbits stuff wasn't encoded in binhex.  it's much
>smaller than the comp.sys.mac.digest, which is not encoded -- why must
>tidbits be encoded?  Don't most usenet news site use data compression
>in transmission, making obviating the need for binhex?

The problem is that it is a hypercard stack, *not* a text file (like comp.
sys.mac.digest). A hypercard stack is a binary file, and you can't post
binary files (well, actually you can. You just can't do it successfully =8^)
What binhex does is it converts the file from binary to ascii, so that it
can get posted. It does not compress the file (StuffIt is the standard 
compression utility).

Note: one reason many files are compressed before they get binhexed is to
reduce disk space, and not necessarily to speed up transmission.

--jjw

__
Hail to the sungod.   || John Wichers || wichers@husc4.harvard.edu
He sure is a fun god. || 121 Museum St #2, Somerville Ma. 02143
Ra! Ra! Ra!           || Anarchy - It's not a law, it's just a good idea.
|| Jesus saves sinners ... and redeems them for valuable cash prizes!!! ||