Xref: utzoo alt.books.technical:430 comp.os.msdos.programmer:5340 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!ukc!stl!robobar!ronald From: ronald@robobar.co.uk (Ronald S H Khoo) Newsgroups: alt.books.technical,comp.os.msdos.programmer Subject: Re: Binary Postings (was: Errata file for UNDOCUMENTED DOS) Message-ID: <1991May27.222948.13505@robobar.co.uk> Date: 27 May 91 22:29:48 GMT References: <1991May24.180400.27553@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> <1991May25.201843.12565@uwasa.fi> <1991May27.194227.23528@demon.co.uk> Organization: Robobar Ltd., Perivale, Middx., ENGLAND. Lines: 33 cliff@demon.co.uk (Cliff Stanford) writes: > IMHO compressing > and uuencoding a lage text file is a far better idea that posting it in > its raw text format. I beg to differ. > How you think it can increase net traffic (one of > the points you made) I fail to comprehend. Simple. zip->uuencode->compress will often result in a larger file than compressing the text directly. The news software system should be optimised for human use. Unless you build in intelligence about every single compression and encoding scheme into every single newsreader (including cat and grep) you are onto a loser. The approach of putting compression and encoding where it belongs -- in the news transport subsystem simplifies and empowers. It means that you can pick the compression and encoding scheme that suits your particular link. If a particular site particularly wishes to STORE new compressed, then it can make its own decision to modify its news software to do it, but this should not need intervention on a per-poster basis, because that leads to too much confusion. So, if you're posting text, please post text. Do not encode it first. You are breaking more than you are saving. Read, and follow Prof Salmi's instructions. They are there for a purpose. Thank you. -- Ronald Khoo +44 81 991 1142 (O) +44 71 229 7741 (H)