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From: cwr@pnet01.cts.com (Will Rose)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Uuencoded sources
Message-ID: <8177@crash.cts.com>
Date: 25 Mar 91 06:36:09 GMT
Sender: root@crash.cts.com
Organization: People-Net [pnet01], El Cajon CA
Lines: 60

Glen Overby (overby@plains.NoDak.edu) writes:
 
>In article <48414@nigel.ee.udel.edu> RECHTIEN%DOSUNI1.BITNET@cunyvm.cuny.edu
(Jens-Heiner Rechtien) writes:
>>Maarten Huisjes  <mjh@cs.vu.nl> writes:
>>> } -- Everyone should compress and uuencode his diff's --
>>> NO!
 
>I agree with Maarten.  I think the rest of the world is stupid to sit here
>and pat BITNET people on the head.  If you got a problem with your network,
>either fix it yourself or GO PAY IBM TO FIX IT!  You're on an IBM network;
>don't they give you good technical support?
 
Alas, I am not on an IBM network, and I cannot afford the extensive re-wiring
of the west coast of America that would be needed to put me on one; however,
all comp.os.minix files containing tabs/spaces still get munged on the way to
my system.  Checks down the feed line show no possibility of change.
 
>It's not the net load that I really hate (not that I like it) -- it's the
>manual work I have to do to decode the postings, and the additional disk
>space it sucks up before I decode everything.  We're talking megabytes
>here...  It's degrading that the whole reason for the uuencoding is to help
>pacify an IBM creation.
 
Well, I generally find that postings are under 64K (some mailers enforce
this limit), so the most additional space used for uudecoding and 
decompressing is going to be 100K, allowing a 40% compression ratio.  Not
really a lot of space, and I've not found the time especially significant
in the past.  (Note, I don't decompress *everything*, but I do look at 
most of the stuff posted to comp.os.minix.  Quite possibly when posting
to comp.os.unix or alt.sources the rules would be different).  One of
the first shell scripts I wrote was a very crude file unpacker, and I now
have an equally crude file packer to go with it.  It even adds the footer,
and drops me into the editor to add a descriptive message - the acme of
user-friendliness!)
 
When upgrading from 1.3 to 1.5.10 I finally decided, around 1.5.6, that for 
reliability I had to have correct crcs; having let things slide, it took me
a month or so and a lot of help from my friends to get a clean set of files.
Once you've added a patch with spaces substituted for tabs, that file and its
descendants to the nth generation will fail crc checking.  Ast once posted
an important 2-line kernel patch without uuencoding; I tried for an hour
to install it with the correct (new) crc, and failed.  I now scarcely
look at code that is *not* uuencoded; it will mostly run, but it's not
reliable, and it's too difficult to patch.
 
I realise uuencoding is a nuisance to the sender, but it's a life-saver
to many recipients.  Please use it if you can.
 
Good luck - Will
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
"If heaven too had passions  | Will Rose
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