Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!rutgers!iuvax!bsu-cs!dhesi
From: dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: Re: Source ARCs are inappropriate!
Message-ID: <4458@bsu-cs.UUCP>
Date: 23 Oct 88 08:04:05 GMT
References: <7119@dasys1.UUCP>
Reply-To: dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi)
Organization: CS Dept, Ball St U, Muncie, Indiana
Lines: 74

In article <7119@dasys1.UUCP> tneff@dasys1.UUCP (Tom Neff) writes:
>Merely ARC'ing a
>bunch of source (text) files does NOT create a "binary" worth sending
>in this newsgroup via UUENCODE!  Recent postings such as GYMAKE are
>wasteful and rude.
>
>The appropriate thing to do with a source collection is to package it
>as a shell archive and post it to a source newsgroup as clear text.

A comp.sources.msdos newsgroup would be nice but doesn't exist.
Somebody should propose it and volunteer to moderate it.

While sources of general interest are posted to comp.sources.misc,
posting sources there does have two disadvantages.  First, the charter
of comp.sources.misc is to get sources postings out quickly.  A
frequent result is that many source postings are unaccompanied by any
information about what they are.  Second, comp.sources.misc is a
general-interest newsgroup and posting too many MS-DOS specific sources
there may cause irritation to those who don't use MS-DOS, or at least
to those who don't have any compilers on an MS-DOS system.

Here is a summary of the advantages and disadvantages of posting source
in archived format versus posting it in clear text format.

Advantages of source in clear text format:

o    Usenet newsfeeds can take full advantage of compression for
     transmission.  The UNIX "compress" program will compress most text
     to 50% of its size.  Compression of a uuencoded archive containing
     compressed files will yield a net compression  of its original
     contents (allowing for expansion during uuencoding) of perhaps 30
     per cent.  These numbers are rough guesses.

o    Users can easily see what has been posted without having to
     unarchive it first.

Disadvantages of source in clear text format:

o    Clear text takes more disk space for storage.

o    If the source is stored as a shar archive, then only a very
     rudimentary error detection (by counting characters) is
     available.  Shar does not maintain any CRC value for error
     detection.

o    If the source is stored as a shar archive, not all systems can
     extract it.  On UNIX systems extraction is easy.  On other systems
     extraction may be difficult or nearly impossible, especially if
     the shar archive uses a prefix character.  (A prefix character is
     needed to avoid losing leading blanks and tabs when the article
     passes through peculiar network links, and to avoid the string
     "From" being replaced by the string ">From" at the beginning of a
     line by helpful mail software.

o    Some transmission channels will strip out trailing blanks;
     though not usually detrimental to source, this will often change the
     character count and lead to users wondering if they received
     uncorrupted source.  Some transmission channels will silently
     truncate source lines to 80.  BITNET is a good example of 
     both of the above.

o    Most cleartext for MS-DOS contains lines terminated with <CR><LF>
     pairs;  for Usenet posting as clear text these will need to be
     converted to <LF>-terminated lines, and converted back by the end
     user when moving to his microcomputer.

o    Since almost all source posted to comp.binaries.ibm.pc is
     accompanied by one or more executable files, posting clear text
     will approximately double the number of articles posted.  Each
     source posting will need to be posted as at least two articles,
     one containing the source files, the other containing the archived
     executable(s).
-- 
Rahul Dhesi         UUCP:  <backbones>!{iuvax,pur-ee}!bsu-cs!dhesi