Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!aplcen!haven!udel!burdvax!bbking!rmarks
From: rmarks@KSP.Unisys.COM (Richard Marks)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: UU/XXencode availability
Message-ID: <740@bbking.KSP.Unisys.COM>
Date: 20 Feb 90 16:13:33 GMT
Organization: Unisys Corp. Knowledge Systems Projects
Lines: 27

Many of you are using my UUENCODE/DECODE (latest version
3.16).  I am now finishing the latest version which will
include an XXencode/decode capability (as well as UU..).

I am having some problems with automatic detection of XXencoded
files as compared to error conditions.  I expect the new
version will be available in a month.

The advantage of my UUdecode is that it will accept multiple
files and has all sorts of code to accept the little glitches
that all the varities of UUencode throw out.  It is written in
Turbo Pascal for MS-DOS.  My UUdecode also does the crc checks
compatibly with c.b.i.p postings.

The advantage of XXencode over UUencode is that XXencode uses
a character set that does not get corrupted on ASCII to EBCDIC
conversion.  This character set is the upper and lower case
characters, the numbers, and the plus and minus sign.  This
creates problems when trying to programmatially distinguish 
text at the start of a file from encoded data.

The best "encode" solution is possibly Brad Templeton's ABE.
(I have not used this yet, I have only read about it.)

Regards to all,
Richard Marks
rmarks@KSP.unisys.COM