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From: dafa@ihwpt.UUCP (David Fay)
Newsgroups: net.micro.mac
Subject: Re: Remote-initiated file xfers with Red Ryder
Message-ID: <664@ihwpt.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 28-Jan-86 19:06:32 EST
Article-I.D.: ihwpt.664
Posted: Tue Jan 28 19:06:32 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 29-Jan-86 06:31:45 EST
References: <416@sol1.UUCP>
Distribution: na
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 26

> I've seen the claim made that Red Ryder does not support unattended file 
> transfers initiated by a remote computer.  This is not correct.

It's true that in Host Mode Red Ryder can receive files passively. However,
this is done in an idiosyncratic way. In particular it is not done as
Dennis Brothers suggested in his MacBinary proposal. Instead, to do
a sender-initiated XMODEM transfer to Red Ryder, the sender must
first send it the command "RECX filename". RR responds with
"Ready to Receive...", which the sender must ignore. Finally it starts
sending out NAKs until the transfer begins.

Now I'm sure this way of doing things works fine when you only have
to send files to Red Ryder. But it sure makes life difficult for the
sender, if it doesn't know what kind of terminal program is on the
other end. I would strongly urge anyone writing a terminal program
in the future to avoid such idiosyncrasies and to accomodate Brothers' 
proposal to let "ESC b" initiate a MacBinary transfer (and for
backward compatibility, to let "ESC a" initiate a MacTerminal
transfer.)

-- 
--------------------
David Fay
AT&T Bell Laboratories
Naperville, IL 60566
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