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From: earleh@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Earle R. Horton)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac,news.admin
Subject: Re: some (should-be) ground-rules for submissions to comp.binaries.*
Keywords: * XBIN FILENAME FIX *
Message-ID: <8604@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU>
Date: 26 May 88 02:54:42 GMT
References: <2689@utastro.UUCP>
Sender: news@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU
Reply-To: earleh@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Earle R. Horton)
Organization: Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH
Lines: 60

In article <2689@utastro.UUCP> werner@utastro.UUCP (Werner Uhrig) writes:
>
> (He says xbin doesn't like file name characters > 0x7F)
>
>PS: if someone has a version of xbin that can handle ALL non-ASCII chars in
>	file-names, I'd appreciate .....

Werner requests that posters of Macintosh programs not use non-ASCII
characters in file names, since these are not legal in UNIX file names.
It is better to fix xbin, I think, since then you don't place artificial
restrictions on Macintosh users, who may not especially care about UNIX
peculiarities.  The fix is easy, just AND every character in the UNIX
file names used by xbin with 0x7F.  Here is a C code fragment from my
copy of xbin.  Note that I have added translation for some (but not all)
characters that sh and csh do not like.  This is, frankly, getting
cumbersome, and I am thinking of converting to use of a translation
table someday...

        namebuf[n] = '\0';
 
        /* get rid of troublesome characters */
        for (np = namebuf; *np; np++){
                if (*np == ' ' || *np == '/' || *np == '!' ||
                *np == '(' || *np == ')' || *np == '[' || *np == ']'
                || *np == '*' || *np == '<' || *np == '>' ||
                *np == '?' || *np == '\'' || *np == '"' || *np == '$')
                        *np = '_';
                *np &= 0x7f;
        }
        sprintf(files.f_data, "%s.data", namebuf);
        sprintf(files.f_rsrc, "%s.rsrc", namebuf);
        sprintf(files.f_info, "%s.info", namebuf);

My 2 cents worth:

I don't think StuffIt is a good choice for a standard of compressing
files, since then every poster has to shell out $20.00 to be a legal
user.  I am partial to use of UNIX-compatible tar and compress.  There
exist both tar and compress for the Macintosh, both freeware, but
only the MPW Tool version of tar handles the resource fork.  At this
time, there is not a suitable method of archiving/compressing
Macintosh files which:

	a)  Is free.
	b)  Runs under the Finder.

The MPW version of Tar can archive Macintosh files using the MacBinary
standard, and the resulting file can be unTar'ed on any UNIX machine
and possibly VMS and other systems, also on any Macintosh which has
MPW installed.  Portions of the archive can be downloaded to a
Macintosh from any system which has an xmodem program, and many free
terminal programs will recognize the MacBinary format of the
downloaded file(s).  Tar files can be compressed using MacCompress2.1,
which is compatible with UNIX compress.  If the MPW Tool version of
Tar were compiled into a Macintosh application, then I think this
would be an ideal choice for an all-purpose archiving program.
Volunteers?
*********************************************************************
*Earle R. Horton, H.B. 8000, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755   *
*********************************************************************