Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!chinet!dag
From: dag@chinet.UUCP (Daniel A. Glasser)
Newsgroups: comp.sources.d
Subject: Re: File headers on shar files
Keywords: headers, comp.sources, source postings, shars
Message-ID: <1955@chinet.UUCP>
Date: 9 Dec 87 18:59:21 GMT
References: <393@ddsw1.UUCP> <10908@sri-spam.istc.sri.com>
Reply-To: dag@chinet.UUCP (Daniel A. Glasser)
Organization: Chinet - Public Access Unix
Lines: 39

In article <10908@sri-spam.istc.sri.com> wohler@milk1.istc.sri.com.UUCP (Bill Wohler) writes:
+[some stuff deleted]
+  also, if "tarmail" of the compress family had been made the de-facto
+  standard of shipping sources, then you wouldn't have to have even
+  written your script--atob would ignore all the leading garbage.  
+
+  for those not in the know, tarmail is a filter which essentially does:
+
+	tar | compress | btoa | mail
+
+  compress makes the distributions smaller, which would make uucp sites
+  much happier (often cuts source by almost one half). [ab]to[ba] does a 
+  better job than uu{en,de}code, and is not setuid to uucp which makes it 
+  easier to debinary things.
+
+  if there aren't any machines that compress doesn't run on, perhaps
+  shar could be phased out...
+[more stuff deleted]
+						--bw
+						wohler@istc.sri.com

The main problem with this suggestion is that compress does not work
the same on all systems.  I have a UNIX system that only allows up to
12 bits for compression.  Many systems support more bits.  The default
is the max, thus if I get a compressed file from, say, a 3B2, I cannot
decompress it.  If somebody could post a version of compress that would
give the same number of bits for all systems, at least for decompression,
this problem would be lessened.

(My UNIX box is a Z8001 based system, so doing huge model is not an
option, also, PDP-11's have the same trouble.)


-- 
					Daniel A. Glasser
					...!ihnp4!chinet!dag
					...!ihnp4!mwc!dag
					...!ihnp4!mwc!gorgon!dag
	One of those things that goes "BUMP!!! (ouch!)" in the night.