Xref: utzoo comp.sys.mac:17304 news.admin:2722
Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!unisoft!gethen!farren
From: farren@gethen.UUCP (Michael J. Farren)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac,news.admin
Subject: Re: some (should-be) ground-rules for submissions to comp.binaries.*
Keywords: * XBIN FILENAME FIX *
Message-ID: <943@gethen.UUCP>
Date: 18 Jun 88 13:00:27 GMT
References: <2689@utastro.UUCP> <8604@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> <1381@uokmax.UUCP> <643@vsi1.UUCP> <2758@utastro.UUCP>
Reply-To: farren@gethen.UUCP (Michael J. Farren)
Organization: There's Unix there in Oakland
Lines: 23

In article <2758@utastro.UUCP> werner@utastro.UUCP (Werner Uhrig) writes:
>
>will this baloney-argument never stop?  are you telling me that when I reduce
>the size of a text file (or whatever) by 40% by compressing it, here comes
>the transmission program trying to compress it, only to double it back in size?

The compress program used in Usenet transmission will not result in a 
larger transmitted file than that stored.  But - what happens when your
pre-compressed file gets sent through a mailer which doesn't understand
eight-bit data?  To guarantee transmission throughout the entire net, 
you need to convert a compressed file into pure ASCII by using uuencode
or some such, and this DOES increase file size significantly.

Remember, too, that compression is quite ineffective on smaller files
(such as individual articles), and fairly CPU-intensive as
well.  The standard news transmission scheme batches many articles together
before compressing, resulting in much greater efficiency. 

-- 
Michael J. Farren             | "INVESTIGATE your point of view, don't just 
{ucbvax, uunet, hoptoad}!     | dogmatize it!  Reflect on it and re-evaluate
        unisoft!gethen!farren | it.  You may want to change your mind someday."
gethen!farren@lll-winken.llnl.gov ----- Tom Reingold, from alt.flame