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

[nathan@visi.com (Nathan Mates)]

In article <NOSPAM***bjbear-ya023680002403971625120001@news-s01.ca.us.ibm.net>,
B.J. Major & Dennis J. Gorin <NOSPAM***bjbear@ibm.net> wrote:
[Long explanation of what he did snipped]
>So there is no reason "in theory" why I should not have gotten this Binscii
>program to work.  I tried for a week to work on this with absolutely no
>success.  I then put it all aside.

   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.

   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.

   This has demonstrated my point about downloading through Macs once
again: they're god-awful inconsistent about doing Apple II file
writing correctly right out of the box. You *DO* need helper apps do
do the job right. 

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

>ProTYPE should be as available as "Shrinkit"  and "Binscii" are on the FTP
>and web sites, but unfortunately it is not.  

   That's partly because the Macheads have been in denial about the
need for helper programs, continually claiming "it works for me." And,
if you DID read the FAQ, I clearly stated that there used to be
another program to do what ProTYPE's doing for you. But, it
disappeared. Not under my control, go bug whomever wrote that.

> The Apple2 FAQ also needs to be changed to reflect this
>new information, and also needs to be reworded as to not make it so
>difficult for those who download on the Macintosh end with a TCP/IP
>connection.

   The FAQ was updated last summer when the last program to do this
was mentioned.  And updated when that program disappeared. And will be
updated again. You just happened to read it at a time when for reasons
totally beyond my control, the magical necessary program was
unavailable, and nobody was saying precisely where a replacement could
be found.  "Go look for it on a Mac site" is probably what I'll say
for now.

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

Nathan Mates
--
<*> Nathan Mates http://www.visi.com/~nathan/      <*>
# What are the facts? Again and again and again-- what are the _facts_?
# Shun wishful thinking, avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors
# think-- what are the facts, and to how many decimal places?  -R.A. Heinlein