Xref: utzoo alt.sources.d:618 comp.sources.d:5563
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!know!samsung!dali.cs.montana.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!aplcen!uunet!alembic!csu
From: csu@alembic.acs.com (Dave Mack)
Newsgroups: alt.sources.d,comp.sources.d
Subject: Re: Unnecessary tar-compress-uuencodes
Message-ID: <1990Jul10.224512.20088@alembic.acs.com>
Date: 10 Jul 90 22:45:12 GMT
References: <15652@bfmny0.BFM.COM>
Organization: Alembic Computer Services, McLean VA
Lines: 45

As the culprit in one of the more recent crimes of this nature, I
suppose I should answer this.

In article <15652@bfmny0.BFM.COM> tneff@bfmny0.BFM.COM (Tom Neff) writes:
>We have recently seen a spate of "source" postings in "uuencoded
>compressed TAR" form, instead of SHAR or other traditional plain text
>formats.  Now, possibly in response, we are seeing tools to manipulate
>this format posted.  This is a bad trend!  Let's not encourage it
>further.
>
>The supposed advantage of shipping files this way is that when all the
>decoding is finally done on the receiver's machine, you are guaranteed
>the exact byte stream that existed on the source machine -- apparently a
>very seductive feature for some authors.  But the price for this is
>heavy:

The supposed advantage in the case of the Anonymous Contact Service
software which I recently posted to alt.sources is that the uuencoded
compressed tar file was 135K, whereas the corresponding shar file is
235K. Also, my version of shar3.24 died horribly when presented with
a directory tree (I now have Rich Salz' cshar kit, including makekit,
which solves almost all my problems, except that it insists on putting
the README in the second kit.)

> * Compressed newsfeeds, which already impart whatever transmission
>   efficiency gain LZW can offer, are circumvented and in fact
>   sandbagged by the pre-compression of data.

Drivel. See above. I sincerely doubt that recompressing a uuencoded
compressed file expands it significantly beyond the overhead already
added by uuencode. Sending shar files costs additional disk space, and
quite a few news links use 12-bit rather than 16-bit compression.


However, since the consensus on the net seems to be that the available
transmission bandwidth and disk storage space are both unlimited, my
next release of the ACS will be in the form of shar files. As an 
added bonus, all of the filenames will be under 14 characters in this
one.

I cannot, however, guarantee that the README will be in Part01.

Dave Mack
embittered idealist, net.scum, villain, and commercial abuser of the
net for over three days.