Xref: utzoo comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d:322 comp.sys.ibm.pc:15961 Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!husc6!uwvax!oddjob!kaon!sphinx!pre1 From: pre1@sphinx.uchicago.edu (Grant Prellwitz) Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d,comp.sys.ibm.pc Subject: Re: Source code newsgroup for MS-DOS Message-ID: <4298@sphinx.uchicago.edu> Date: 28 May 88 01:42:15 GMT References: <1555@bu-tyng.bu.edu> <3186@bsu-cs.UUCP> <11803@ut-sally.UUCP> <7978@brl-smoke.ARPA> <4827@teddy.UUCP> Reply-To: pre1@sphinx.uchicago.edu.UUCP (Grant Prellwitz) Organization: U Chicago Computation Center Lines: 44 In article <4827@teddy.UUCP> jpn@teddy.UUCP (John P. Nelson) writes: >In article <7978@brl-smoke.ARPA> w8sdz@brl.arpa (Keith B. Petersen (WSMR|towson) ) writes: >>I don't agree that another newsgroup is needed for sources. There is no >>need to post clear text when we can package related files in ARCs ... > >As has already been discussed several times, this is a BAD IDEA. Arc'ing >text files (program source files) causes significantly HIGHER transmission >costs for most usenet sites! This is because news is often compressed >before transmission: Ascii files compress to a much smaller size than >ascii files that have been arc'ed (compressed), then uuencoded. > >This restriction is not true for BINARY files: only ascii text. Please >use shar format or other cleartext packaging method for source! >-- > john nelson > >UUCP: {decvax,mit-eddie}!genrad!teddy!jpn >smail: jpn@genrad.com I have to disagree here. While it may (or may not be) more efficient to post clear text from the standpoint of a singel file, this advantage is totally lost if errors creep into the posting. While this may not be a problem with some of the talk groups, it is disasterous when dealing with a couple hundred KB of source code. If someone is unable to get a packege to compile they will spend a lot of time trying to determine if it is their fault, a true bug, incompatabililties, or errors that crept in during transmission. It would be (in my humble opinion:^) much better to take out one of these variables by posting in a format that has inherent error checking, not to mention a date and time stamp so we can tell for sure if we have the most recent version. I think that the cost to the net of the repostings of suspected bad postings, not to mention the cost in terms of time to the employers whose employees are trying to figure out what went wrong with a posting, would be more than the extra cost of transmitting arced text files. The above are my own opinions. They are also those of my employer (me). Grant Prellwitz Prellwitz Computing Services -- =====================Grant Prellwitz========================== !ihnp4!gargoyle!sphinx!pre1 pre1@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP 76474,2121 (CIS) pre1 (BIX) !ihnp4!chinet!pre1 contents sole responsibility of poster.