Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mailrus!iuvax!purdue!bu.edu!bu-cs!bass!oneill From: oneill@bass.bu.edu (Brian V O'Neill) Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d Subject: Encoding and compression for cbip (Was: xx vs. uu) Message-ID: <52155@bu.edu.bu.edu> Date: 13 Feb 90 20:46:58 GMT References: <1513@krafla.rhi.hi.is> Sender: news@bu.edu.bu.edu Reply-To: oneill@bass.bu.edu (Brian V O'Neill) Organization: Boston University Lines: 25 I think at least for now UUEncoding should continue to be used. XXEncoding may work better, but a majority of sites do not have it. I do not know what the percentage of BITNET sites connected to UseNet is, but I believe it is relatively small. Perhaps if it can be guaranteed that XXEncoding will be in widespread use, then it would be proper for cbip. What I think would be a more attainable solution at this point would be some sort of Echoing system. Some system connected to BITNET but receives UUEncoded postings properly could recode the postings with XXEncode, and redistribute them in an auxiliary group avilable to BITNET sites. As far as compression schemes, this gets back to the discussion on what systems are Connected to UseNet - mostly Unix systems, and few PCs. I am not aware of a fully operational, portable ZIP program for Unix, and I don't even think a portable unpacking program exists for LHArc. Until fully-operational, portable versions of these formats are available, they should not be used. ============================================================================ Brian O'Neill - Local Internet Access Account Internet: oneill@bu-pub.bu.edu UUCP : ...!bu.edu!bu-pub!oneill