Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!mailrus!iuvax!maytag!looking!brad
From: brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: Re: Automated extraction of programs from c.b.i.p postings.
Message-ID: <1990Jul30.021717.21133@looking.on.ca>
Date: 30 Jul 90 02:17:17 GMT
References: <5213@castle.ed.ac.uk> <3994@trantor.harris-atd.com> <623@enint.Wichita.NCR.COM> <1990Jul22.200236.26809@looking.on.ca> <2077@cirrusl.UUCP>
Organization: Looking Glass Software Ltd.
Lines: 22

Actually, there are few differences in the advantages between ABE's
uuencode mode and the ABE encoding modes.  Those are:

a) The human readable binaries -- this is useless on compressed binaries.
However, there is a strong argument that binaries should not be compressed.
(The transmission schemes are already compressed and this wastes time)
There is a counter argument however, wrt disk space in the spools.

b) Smaller encodings -- they are actually about the same size on compressed
binaries.

c) The ABE2 character set is designed to be bitnet-proof.  So is the
xxencode character set.  The UUENCODE set is not as bitnet-proof.  The
xxencode set could be added, but that defeats the universality of the
UUENCODE character set.


The multi-part encoding redundancy, the CRC32s and the other fields all
apply to the uuencode version, even if they are ignored by typical
uudecode programs.
-- 
Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473