Re: How to reconstitute Computist posts?

[The Wizard of Oz <wizard@emeraldcity.gov>]

On Mon, 16 May 2005 21:12:46 +0000, Greg Buchner wrote:

> In article <pan.2005.05.16.17.37.16.272119@emeraldcity.gov>,
>  The Wizard of Oz <wizard@emeraldcity.gov> wrote:
> 
>> > An encoding scheme that does incorporate (simple) compression is binhex.  
>> > Files can be made smaller under that format but it's fairly rare as it 
>> > just uses a simple RLE compression method.
>> 
>> 	I forgot about this one. When I do the article I'll include the above
>> paragraph (with your permission).
> 
> No problem...it's public information as far as I'm concerned.

	Thanks.

>> > I do a test, but the news reader I'm currently using will extract yEnc 
>> > postings, but doesn't seem to post in yEnc.  And there's a few programs 
>> > that will decode yEnc on the Mac OS X end, but I didn't find any that 
>> > would encode and let me test.
>> 
>> 	Most readers only allow posting in plain text. To post very large files,
>> I gather there are special posting programs. In some of the anime
>> newsgroups, I have noticed a number of people with Macs. I didn't notice
>> if they were posting text messages or binaries.
> 
> I suppose I should have been more clear.  I have posted binaries of 
> stuff before, both uuencoded and yEnc, but that was with a different 
> program than what I'm using now.  I can't find a way to switch 
> MT-Newswatcher 3.4 binary posting method so I assume it just uses either 
> uuencoding or Mime-64 as there's a button labeled 'Send with Mime'.  So 
> the program I'm using just isn't giving me the options to show that yEnc 
> currently doesn't seem to use any compression.  I could move to another 
> computer where I have a different program that will post in yEnc, but I 
> don't currently feel like going through the effort.  :-)

	I'm currently using pan for text (I used to use KNode) and BNR2 for
binaries. I know BNR2 doesn't allow posting. I think pan only posts in
text (maybe with attachments). Apart from pan freezing when it uses an
unstable server, both are excellent for downloads. I'm an old timer and
haven't quite figured out how to post binaries from a *NIX box (really
easy I hear). Then again my ISP freaks out when ever someone wants to do
anything other than e-mail or the web. I've gotten several "You'd better
be nice" messages just for downloading some videos and Linux distros. ;-)

> But, I just went to an alt.binaries group, downloaded a yEnc'ed text 
> file, it's 13,169 bytes yEnc'ed, 12,907 when decoded.  There's obviously 
> no compression going on because zipped it's 3,747 bytes.  That same file 
> uuencoded is 17,858 and just to throw it into the mix, it's 11,224 bytes 
> when binhexed, so obviously it compressed it somewhat.  (I did strip all 
> of the internet headers out of the file when I downloaded it.)

	OK. I guess they haven't implemented the compression in yEnc yet.

> So, we have:
> 
> Original Text: 12,907
> yEnc: 13,169
> uuEncode: 17,858
> binhex: 11,224
> Zipped: 3,747
> 
> Now, I hope I haven't muddied things up too much for people in my 
> attempt to make things clearer.  :-)

	I think your table says volumes. This is really good too. If it's OK with
you (I gotta keep asking) I'll see if I can fit it in the article.

> Greg B.

				Later
				Mike