Path: utzoo!utgpu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!wuarchive!uunet!mcsun!hp4nl!utrcu1!infnews!infnews!kremer
From: kremer@cs.utwente.nl (Harro Kremer)
Newsgroups: alt.sources.d
Subject: Re: encoded files
Keywords: uudecode uuencode standard
Message-ID: <1990Dec5.100335@cs.utwente.nl>
Date: 5 Dec 90 09:03:35 GMT
References: <1990Nov30.133440.1919@vitro.com>
Sender: usenet@cs.utwente.nl
Reply-To: kremer@cs.utwente.nl (Harro Kremer)
Organization: University of Twente, Dept. of Computer Science
Lines: 32

In article <1990Nov30.133440.1919@vitro.com>, fsb@vitro.com (Steve
Brailsford) writes:
[..]
|> How come we can't have one program,
|> hopefully, uudecode, to convert binary formats? 

Before agreeing on a specific program, let's agree on its requirements
first. I think the encoded files must be such that they can be mailed
using Email. Thus the following things are not allowed:
1) curly braces may not occur. Some mailhandlers replace them
2) preferably each line has the same length
3) lines may not contain leading or trailing spaces, as they might be
removed
4) lines may not start with a dot as they might be duplicated
5) the encoded file should be a small as possible.

Are there any more things a crippled mail-handler might do to our
files?

I have no knowledge of any MAC or MS-DOS based programs. Of the UNIX
programs uuencode and btoa I know they don't satisfy the requirements
above.
uuencode doesn't satisfy 3); btoa doesn't satisfy 4).

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| Harro Kremer                                             |
| Dept. of Computer Science                                |
| University of Twente                                     |
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