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From: bart@reed.UUCP (Bart Massey)
Newsgroups: net.micro.mac
Subject: Re: Re: FPack for Macintosh
Message-ID: <2342@reed.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 20-Jan-86 03:23:38 EST
Article-I.D.: reed.2342
Posted: Mon Jan 20 03:23:38 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 22-Jan-86 04:28:31 EST
References: <8081@amdcad.UUCP> <1113@arthur.purdue.UUCP> <8388@amdcad.UUCP>
Organization: Reed College, Portland, Oregon
Lines: 30

> Now for an example:  Hack for Unix came over the net a while back, in a group
> of shar archives.  Now how do I transport those source to the Mac? I
> unshar them, then I macput -u each one of them???? That's how I did it a year
> ago.  
> 
> Now if you want to write a packit compatible Unix program which can unpack
> and pack packit files on Unix, go ahead.  Or if you want to write a /bin/sh
> compatible unpacker for the Mac, go ahead.  Meanwhile, the next time a shar
> archive full of source code I want to port to my Mac comes along, I will
> unshar it on my Unix system, fpack the files into a smaller number of
> files, and macput -u those to the Mac where I can unfpack them and begin
> porting.
>
>  Jim Budler

Obviously what is desperately needed is C source for:

	A two-way xbin (to and from binhex format on a Unix machine)
	A two-way packit (to and from packit format on a Unix machine)

Neither of these is non-trivial, obviously.  The hacks to binx (un-xbin)
a file that came over the net a while ago would be a good start on this
one.  The other would have to be written from scratch.  Any takers?

BTW, if the BinHex5.0 file format is ever universally adopted, it could
solve the problem with appropriate (fairly simple) hacks to macput and
macget, as it provides for a limited form of batch transfer...

						Bart Massey
						..tektronix!reed!bart