Re: Mac to Apple // downloaders: ProTYPE works!!!!

[dirk@gaga.maschinenbau.uni-dortmund.de (Dirk Froehling)]

In article <5h7a57$maj$1@darla.visi.com>, nathan@visi.com (Nathan Mates) wrote:

>   Alright, so you made sure that the filetype and creator were set
>correctly to 'TEXT' and 'pdos' respectively [That info has been in the
>FAQ for months, misrepresentations notwithstanding], and there was no
>resource fork on the mac side, but there was one on the Apple II
>side. Then you run it though this magical program and there isn't a
>resource fork on the Apple II side. Something changed in that file,
>and it'd be nice to see precisely what, so that we're not so dependent
>on random program XYZ.

Not quite right. There wasn't a resource fork on the Apple II side.
There was no resource fork at all, and he used ProTYPE on the Mac
before he took the file to the Apple II. Nothing changed in that
file, it just got typed correctly.
I always used GSSCII+ before I wrote ProTYPE (it worked for me), but
when I tried to use BINSCII, I ran into the same problem. I don't have
a book about ProDOS commands, so I just gave up, as there is an easier
way now.

>   As I noted in the FAQ, there *was* another program to do exactly
>the same thing, but it disappeared from the Mac ftp sites. I'm not
>responsible for maintaining Mac programs, keeping them around or
>anything else, so if the magic Mac downloading program of the month
>disappears, we'll go through this again. And again.

You mean "Sciibin for the Mac"? It was the predecessor of ProTYPE and
never made it to a Mac site, afaik. But it was available on caltech
and ground.

>   Time to troll around a few Mac ftp sites to try and find the program
>of the month...

Do you know http://www.shareware.com/ ? Go for it, select "Macintosh"
from the popup menu, type "ProTYPE" and hit search. You will get a
description of ProTYPE and about 20 sites where you can download it
from, ordered by reliability. And if you don't know that ProTYPE
exists, type "Binscii" or "Apple II". There you are.

You can find WinDOS programs that way, too ;)

>   That's partly because the Macheads have been in denial about the
>need for helper programs, continually claiming "it works for me." And,

>   "Not rocket science to download properly thru a Mac", my ***. It
>isn't done right, and neither Apple nor Macheads will tell you
>otherwise.

When you tell me about a program that strips binscii wrappers and
types ProDOS files on a DOS/Windows computer as easy as ProTYPE, I'll
be impressed. I simply don't need BINSCII on my Apple IIGS. I take 
the ShrinkIt archives home, they need the least space on disk.

And don't forget "Shrink II"!!!!! It is commercially available software
for the Mac by EGO Systems (GS+). It can pack and unpack ShrinkIt files
and wrap and unwrap Binscii (but not as fast and convenient as ProTYPE ;)

Dirk

-- 
| Dirk Froehling - Germany, Uni Dortmund, FB Maschinenbau, LS Mechanik |
| dirk@gaga.maschinenbau.uni-dortmund.de           GEnie: D.FROEHLING1 |