Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!rutgers!ucla-cs!zen!ucbvax!UCONNVM.BITNET!SEWALL From: SEWALL@UCONNVM.BITNET Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple Subject: Posting programs Message-ID: <8708051545.aa00253@SMOKE.BRL.ARPA> Date: Wed, 5-Aug-87 16:51:00 EDT Article-I.D.: SMOKE.8708051545.aa00253 Posted: Wed Aug 5 16:51:00 1987 Date-Received: Sat, 8-Aug-87 07:08:00 EDT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Distribution: world Organization: The ARPA Internet Lines: 78 In spite of the occassional "vote" to post the Chameleon, I'm not about to. I AM trying to sweet-talk a LISTSERV manager into letting us have a couple of Mbytes of space on his server. Patience; he'll consider it - his site is adding new disk storage (scheduled for later this month or early September) at which point he'll be (temporarily) flush with space, AND we probably will get something if we don't cause a lot of needless aggrevation in the meantime. LISTSERV's have the beauty of responding to mailer messages with SENDME fn ft as the first line (that is IF your mailer puts together a return path that actually works - the latest "punishment" for computer science students who are bad is to require them to figure out how to address mail to UUCP hosts! -- sorry, USENET is better than NONET, huh?). In the meantime, those of you posting 300 line messages should consider that there are many recipients of this list who haven't a lot of Kbytes (much less Mbytes) to hold incoming mail. I'm fortunate enough not to lose anything when 116 messages arrive in a half-hour (it happened yesterday, and some were beaucoup Kbytes too), but even on bitnet we have VAX sites that just start bouncing the overflow back. I think Don Elton's recommended limit of only 3K too confining, but 80K clearly is too much. So what's reasonable? I think maybe 10K or so is about the point at which you've gotta start saying "who wants this? Email me and I'll send it to you." As one who has done it, let me point out a problem with the "I'll email it to you" strategy (can't you guess -- who's been making LOTS of noise about addresses). Even if the mailer-deamons send nothing at all back, sending out a lot of individual replies takes time. If paths prove difficult, then it depends on the extent to which a sender is willing to amuse him(her?)self finding an address that doesn't return with "host unknown." I recommend you give SERIOUS thought to how widely needed a program is before you post it. I'm like most everyone else; I hate to know there's a program out there that perhaps (just possibly) I'll need some day. However REALLY, do you need a program that copies files from CP/M to ProDOS (if you have a Z80 card, OK you can use it, otherwise???)? Even for a program will be widely useful (TIC 1.18 comes to mind), posting a big file can cause more aggrevation than it's worth. I'm at a site that thinks in gigabytes, so it's not a bother here, but come on, have a care for the best interests of all. Don't most of you belong to a local user group (FIND a club near you, they are VERY handy)? My local club has TIC 1.18 and much of the other stuff that's been posted (it's also where I got Chameleon) and there are other sources (try a nearby Apple BBS, even if you download TIC long distance it won't be THAT much). Frankly, I prefer not losing the participation of Don Elton and others due to their inability to deal with large (and for them superfluous) files cluttering their mail boxes. I did appreciate getting the modified version of EXECUTIONER (I've tested it and it works fine). It wasn't too large, and it should prove generally useful on the net. But, BAD news: there appear to be a few "printable" characters that don't travel well throughout the net. Morgan Davis attempted to send me a modified EXECUTIONER last week and it got corrupted by the ASCII/EBCDIC translation at whatever node it crossed to BITNET from (ucbvax? Sorry, I forgot) and apparently some characters got corrupted again on the way back through psuvax1. IBM terminals don't have ^ (caret) or ~ (tilde) and they translate some of the bracket characters funny. As I understand it only a handful of characters are involved, but if they aren't avoided, some of you are going to get EXECUTIONER 6byte files that won't EXEC properly. I've been using the EXECUTIONER 4byte (better than just hex) and haven't had anyone say they've not been able to recover the Chameleon. Anyone know which characters need to be avoided? Can the EXECUTIONER be modified to not use them? --------------------- ARPA: sewall%uconnvm.bitnet@wiscvm.wisc.edu Murphy A. Sewall BITNET: SEWALL@UCONNVM School of Business Admin. UUCP: ihnp4!psuvax1!UCONNVM.BITNET!SEWALL University of Connecticut