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From: owens@psuvax1.psu.edu (Robert Michael Owens)
Newsgroups: news.misc
Subject: Re: Messages with >80-character lines
Message-ID: <3012@psuvax1.psu.edu>
Date: Wed, 21-Oct-87 00:53:29 EDT
Article-I.D.: psuvax1.3012
Posted: Wed Oct 21 00:53:29 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 23-Oct-87 01:33:08 EDT
References: <7523@g.ms.uky.edu> <21314@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <7526@g.ms.uky.edu> <7541@e.ms.uky.edu>
Organization: Penn State, University Park, PA
Lines: 31
Summary: urep and -> psuvax1 ->


first, ascii machine -> ascii machine over bitnet using urep can be done
so that an image of the file is transfered using existing code. as alf
would say -- no problem. the problem occures then an ascii machine ->
unknown machine transfer occurs. in this case the ascii machine must
assume the lowest common denominator (a brain damaged ibm machine). hence,
the unix ascii byte stream must be converted into either ibm punch or
print records. most ibm systems require punch records to be exactly 80
characters (fixed length records) and print records to be less than or
equal to 132 characters (variable length records). also a ccc (would
you believe channel command code) or asa character should be prepended
to a print record. furthermore several records (which may have a nop
ccc's so the user can't really see them) may have to be prepended to the
file (how many can say :read card).

to make thing worse there is no one ebcdic standard (hence the left and
right bracket problem). the ebcdic tab is not correctly interpreted by some
(most) ibm packages (editors, etc), etc. urep converts a file so that if
the file is printed on either the ascii or ebcdic host, the listings are the
same. (how many can say skip to prime page)

second, some (most) ibm hosts can handle very long records. the problem is
not all hosts can. big blue solves this problem by encapsulating the file
(how many can say diskdump or netdata) when it is xfered. also, some jes'es
and rscs2 (as does urep 3.0) can also handle spanned records. rscs1 also
had spanned records but in a way which was pretty much incomptable with
every thing else (special ccc's).

owens

hay. i don't know what i'm talking about either. i just wrote the code.