Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!ncar!gatech!rutgers!bellcore!clyde!watmath!julian!uwovax!16012_3045
From: 16012_3045@uwovax.uwo.ca (Paul Gomme)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: Re: Source ARCs are inappropriate!
Message-ID: <823@uwovax.uwo.ca>
Date: 22 Oct 88 20:35:08 GMT
References: <7119@dasys1.UUCP>
Lines: 22
Organisation: Department of Economics, UWO, London, Ontario, Canada

In article <7119@dasys1.UUCP>, tneff@dasys1.UUCP (Tom Neff) writes:
> 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.

I disagree with you for two reasons.  First, I (for one) don't have access
to anything which will un-shell (short of doing it by hand).  Consequently,
UUENCODEd ARC files are very convenient to me.  Second, ARC files save
transmission time down to my micro.  Don't forget that most of the stuff
posted here _is_ for those MS-DOS machines.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Paul Gomme         Bitnet:  p.gomme@uwovax.bitnet     ARPA: p.gomme@uwo.ca