Xref: utzoo alt.sources.d:615 comp.sources.d:5561
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!sdd.hp.com!decwrl!nsc!taux01!amos
From: amos@taux01.nsc.com (Amos Shapir)
Newsgroups: alt.sources.d,comp.sources.d
Subject: Re: Unnecessary tar-compress-uuencodes
Message-ID: <4187@taux01.nsc.com>
Date: 10 Jul 90 19:44:40 GMT
References: <3114@psueea.UUCP>
Followup-To: alt.sources.d
Organization: National Semiconductor (IC) Ltd, Israel, Home of the Series 32000
Lines: 32
X-Hdate: 18 Tamuz 5750

In article <3114@psueea.UUCP> you write:
|> * Crucial source format conversions such as CR/LF replacement, fixed
|>   or variable record encoding, ASCII/EBCDIC translation, etc, which
|>   automatically take place in plain text news/notes postings, are
|>   again circumvented; users in alien environments are left with
|>   raw UNIX format bitstreams to deal with.
|
|But I don't want the network to translate my articles!  When I post an article,
|there's a good chance that it will go from a UNIX machine, through BITNET, to
|another UNIX machine.  Because it went through BITNET, it will have been
|translated from ASCII into EBCDIC and back into ASCII.  This translation may
|leave scars: some characters may have been transliterated incorrectly, long
|lines may be silently truncated or split, and whitespace may be changed.  And
|all of this is happenning on machines that I have no control over!
|

The point was, what happens to those who use the BITNET/EBCDIC machines?
The fact is, they are more numerous than UNIX users.

|Certainly, when I post an article, I do so because I want to make my source
|code available to people.  Anything that limits the availability should be
|viewed with a critical eye.  Uudecode and compress fall into that catagory.
|So does the BITNET protocol.  A user who lacks uuencode and compress can get
|them from somewhere.  A user who has only a BITNET feed is stuck.

Precisely for this reason, it is better to write you source in a way that
it wouldn't be so sensitive to such changes.

-- 
	Amos Shapir		amos@taux01.nsc.com, amos@nsc.nsc.com
National Semiconductor (Israel) P.O.B. 3007, Herzlia 46104, Israel
Tel. +972 52 522408  TWX: 33691, fax: +972-52-558322 GEO: 34 48 E / 32 10 N