Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!enea!kth!draken!tut!santra!tukki!mat65
From: mat65@tukki.jyu.fi
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: BinHex 4.0 files and downloading
Summary: Suggestions for improvement
Keywords: binhex hqx download
Message-ID: <18355@santra.UUCP>
Date: 21 Dec 88 20:20:44 GMT
Sender: news@santra.UUCP
Reply-To: makela_otto_@jylk.jyu.fi (Otto J. Makela)
Organization: University of Jyvaskyla, Finland
Lines: 35

I'm somewhat new to this scene, so I make stupid questions.

  Has anybody thought of expanding the BinHex 4.0 "hqx" format
to include uuen/decode -like begin and end lines, and some
sort of break facility, also like some versions of uuen/decode ?

  I am not too fond of the current format, as one can't very
well tell if a line has been mistakenly edited off from the
front, or even if you have the whole file.  You have to
download it to a Mac and then try it out.  THEN you get a CRC
error (after hours, well minutes at least of nervous waiting
and slaving over a hot modem :-)

  Also, you have to use an editor to combine the parts of a larger
posting together, and here klutzy-fingered people like me always
lose.  One quickie alternative (requiring no new programs and/or
formats) would be to bracket the start and end of hqx files
postings in comp.mac.binaries with lines like "--- BEGIN ---"
and "--- END ---" so one could just extract the parts of a big
posting to a single file, and then run it thru an awk-script or
something similar to remove the headers and other extra lines,
then upload the result over to a Mac (and then finally getting
the CRC error :-)

  Does anyone know the format of hqx files, so one could build
a small program in the mainframe to test the file's integrity
(is Mr. Lempereur on the net) ?  Are any of these suggestions
already included in some software in existance ?

Otto J. Makela (with poetic license to kill), University of Jyvaskyla

InterNet: makela_otto_@jylk.jyu.fi, BitNet: MAKELA_OTTO_@FINJYU.BITNET
BBS: +358 41 211 562 (V.22bis/V.22/V.21, 24h/d)
Voice phone: +358 41 613 847
Mail: Kauppakatu 1 B 18, SF-40100 Jyvaskyla, Finland, EUROPE