Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!ncar!ames!pasteur!cory.Berkeley.EDU!iverson
From: iverson@cory.Berkeley.EDU (Tim Iverson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: A moderator for Binaries
Message-ID: <1805@pasteur.Berkeley.Edu>
Date: 24 Mar 88 10:49:29 GMT
References: <23699@clyde.ATT.COM>
Sender: news@pasteur.Berkeley.Edu
Reply-To: iverson@cory.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (Tim Iverson)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 50
Keywords: A vote for Rahul--win one for Dhesi

In article <23699@clyde.ATT.COM> feg@clyde.ATT.COM (Forrest Gehrke) writes:
>
>I vote for Rahul for moderator of BINARIES.
>
>I vote against his ZOO as the archiving program for two reasons,however.  
>
>1) The SEA and PK versions of ARC are used by nearly every BBS and 
>most other nets in the country. 2) I, as many others, have dozens of 
>floppies devoted to archives using SEA and PK ARC.

Frankly, I don't see how this bears on the issue at hand: the choosing of an
archiver to be used as a standard in comp.binaries.ibm.pc.  The fact is that
the great majority of people read news on machines for which zoo would be
vastly superior to any form of arc.  We are not talking about forming a
standard for BBS's (whom we don't care about anyway), we are talking about
forming a standard for *this* newsgroup.

>ZOO is a fine idea, but unfortunately it is not a widespread standard.

Again, so what?  Were not talking about everywhere, just here.  I see no
reason to allow people to whom this means nothing influence my decision on
this issue.

>I understand that SEA's ARC has been ported to Unix and PK's ARC can
>turn off "squashing", so why not use ARC?

You say it all in the next line:

>Futhermore, there are probably many people on this net who don't 
>even operate under Unix.

Yes.  Zoo is much, much more portable than arc.  This is the reason
it should be the standard we choose.

>Besides, the moderator should include in the posting a description 
>of the program, what it is used for, and any special requirements 
>(EGA, VGA, MS windows, utility to 123, etc.)  With this information we 
>can decide whether to download.

Really?  I almost invariably read the man page and readme files of
a posting to comp.sources.unix before grabbing the goods.  Rich Salz
does a good job, but no moderator has the time to describe a package
in as great a detail as the author.  The same would be the case here.

>Forrest Gehrke


- Tim Iverson
  iverson@cory.Berkeley.EDU
  ucbvax!cory!iverson