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From: jimb@amdcad.UUCP (Jim Budler)
Newsgroups: net.micro.mac
Subject: Re: FPack for Macintosh
Message-ID: <8568@amdcad.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 22-Jan-86 13:30:31 EST
Article-I.D.: amdcad.8568
Posted: Wed Jan 22 13:30:31 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 23-Jan-86 09:48:48 EST
References: <8081@amdcad.UUCP> <1113@arthur.purdue.UUCP> <8388@amdcad.UUCP> <450@mordred.purdue.UUCP>
Reply-To: jimb@amdcad.UUCP (Jim Budler)
Organization: AMD, Sunnyvale, California
Lines: 80
Keywords: FPack Ascii file packager

In article <450@mordred.purdue.UUCP> sbm@purdue.UUCP (Steve Munson) writes:
>In article <8388@amdcad.UUCP>, jimb@amdcad.UUCP (Jim Budler) writes:
>> ...Now how do I transport those source to the Mac? I
>> unshar them, then I macput -u each one of them????
>
>     Geez, I must be confused.  If you know how to use the shell, you
>say
>...
>right?  The point is that unsharing on UNIX and downloading scores of
>files at once to the Macintosh is easy (can be done automatically).
>Anything that gets in the way of this process, like packit or any
>Macintosh file munger without a UNIX equivalent, is a hindrance.  Once a
>large file gets to the Macintosh, it becomes much more difficult to
>convert further.
>
>> Now if you want to write a packit compatible Unix program which can unpack
>> and pack packit files on Unix, go ahead.
>
>     I wish someone would, or even better yet, stop posting packitted
>files; use shar instead (I know, not as much data compression).
>
>> Or if you want to write a /bin/sh
>> compatible unpacker for the Mac, go ahead.
>
>     That would be a waste of time, and, as I understand it, that is
>what you are doing, right?
>
>     Am I missing something really obvious here?

I'll try one more time.

There are many reasons to prefer a package over a scad of individual file
transfers.

	1)	I may not be attempting to port the code immediately and
thirty source files sitting around with relatively (outside the context of
the program) incomprehensible names like 'tty.c' sitting on a disk is
much less desirable than one file 'Hack.fpack'.  Two years later I can browse
the directory of that disk and know what that file is.

	2)	Using your suggestion if one of the files in the middle bombs
the transfer, and I'm not attending the transfer closely, I may not know
exactly what I lost.  I prefer the overhead of retransmitting a large file
more than once to the overhead of examining all files to determine what I lost.

	3)	When I'm porting code to the mac I prefer to keep the original
code around in case I really blow it and want to revert.  You can keep a
disk with the original code on it ( I often do ) or you can keep the original
archive disk ( packit of fpack ) around and just (with fpack) remove or rename
the offending file and unpack again it will only unpack nonexisting files. I 
know, if I plan ahead and keep the file I'm modifying around with a backup name
(such as file.c.00) I don't need to do this.  But at some point I will decide I don't need that on the disk and throw it away.  Murphy's law guarantees that I
will want that file the next day.

	4)	I don't know if you  work with only one disk or what, but I
generally find unpacking packit files or fpack files on the mac to be little
problem.  I find sitting around the mac watching the little meter inch its way
towards 100 percent to be much more painful.

On your comments concerning packit, you should remember that packit is not a
Unix developed program, and many of the programs that come packited originated 
in places where Unix is not spoken.  The alternative to packit would require
that a person developing or transmitting mac developed programs send them
individually to Unix, and either sending a scad of posted files or sharing
together.  The recent 1040 files posted ( 7 of them ) would have been a much
larger number of postings if packit hadn't been used.  If shar had been used
autoxbin wouldn't work.

If you don't like it, don't use it.  If someone ever posts something
using it just fire up your editor on unix, search for 'fpack:!@#$%' and split
the file.

I use it, other people set me letters of thanks, so they use it, so as far as
I'm concerned the posting was totally justified.  Bye.
-- 
 Jim Budler
 Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
 (408) 749-5806
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