Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!agate!bionet!apple!bloom-beacon!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!nrl-cmf!cmcl2!phri!dasys1!tneff
From: tneff@dasys1.UUCP (Tom Neff)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: Source ARCs are inappropriate!
Summary: wasteful and wrongheaded - shell archives are better
Message-ID: <7119@dasys1.UUCP>
Date: 21 Oct 88 23:51:42 GMT
Reply-To: tneff@dasys1.UUCP (Tom Neff)
Organization: Independent Users Guild
Lines: 17

After all the drawn-out discussion on the merits of net.binaries, I
frankly never thought I'd see it perverted like this.  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.
ARC+UUENCODE should be restricted to no-choice binaries like .EXE's and
data files.  Newsbatch-compress will do a better job of saving net
bandwidth on your source files than ARC+UUENCODE can anyway. Text
should still have primacy on Netnews whenever technically possible, so
that the greatest number of newsreaders can enjoy the benefits of the
information they're paying to pass around.
-- 
Tom Neff			UUCP: ...!cmcl2!phri!dasys1!tneff
	"None of your toys	CIS: 76556,2536	       MCI: TNEFF
	 will function..."	GEnie: TOMNEFF	       BIX: t.neff (no kidding)