Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!burl!codas!ufcsv!ukma!psuvm.bitnet!g15
From: G15@PSUVM.BITNET (John F. Gbruoski)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.8bit
Subject: Re: BITNET PROBLEMS
Message-ID: <29970G15@PSUVM>
Date: 15 Jan 88 22:33:02 GMT
References: <8801151612.AA18530@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Organization: The Pennsylvania State University - Computation Center
Lines: 55

In article <8801151612.AA18530@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>, HABKE@UOFMCC.BITNET says:
>
>  WOULD SOME KIND SOUL PLEASE SEND ME A LIST OF ALL THE ASCII
>  CHARACTERS IN ASCENDING ORDER SO I CAN FIND WHICH ONES ARE
> BEING SWICHED AROUND BY THE BITNET NODES:
<.....decoding attempts deleted.>
     
I had this problem once before with a file, and was able to solve it with a
little help.  Below is a portion of an article which appeared a while back on
comp.sys.atari.st:
     
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
I experienced problems when uudecoding disasmbl.tos, too. But as I noticed,
     
that the program has been posted by someone on BITNET, I examined the file
     
more closely. And this is, what I've found:
     
1. Some lines are short of a few bytes.
     
        ->  Fill those lines with trailing blanks until they line up with
     
            all the other lines.
     
2. There are a lot of tildes ('^' == 0x7e) in the file.
     
   Tilde is not a valid character in an uuencoded file. But I happened to
     
   remember a posting by someone on the net who found out, that these tildes
     
   started out as pointers ('^' == 0x5e).
     
        -> Change all tildes (0x7e) to pointers (0x5e).
     
Next: Now uudecode that modified file.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
     
In addition to this, sometimes a file contains 'grave markers' in place of
spaces (on an 8-bit Atari, they appear as the solid diamond character).  To fix
this problem, simply replace each grave marker with a single space.  I've
found that SpeedScript's global find-and-replace feature works well in
repairing files plagued with these problems.  Hope this helps...
     
     
     
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*                                                                             *
*  PPPP  SSSS      U  U                 John F. Gbruoski   G15 @ PSUVM.BitNet *
*  PPPP  SS        U  U                                                       *
*  P enn   SState  U  University        "Young fool...Only now, at the End,   *
*  P     SSSS      UUUU                        do you understand."            *
*                                                                             *
*  Claimer:  These opinions are my own, and PSU can't have them!              *
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