Unnecessary tar-compress-uuencodes

[Doug Davis]

In article <3114 at psueea.UUCP> kirkenda at eecs.UUCP (Steve Kirkendall) writes:
>I'm certainly guilty of posting articles in *.tar.Z.uue format.  I'm not
>entirely happy with it, but I believe there are some valid reasons for
>using this ugly format...


>I always describe the contents of a uuencoded article, in a plain-text
>paragraph before the "begin" line of the uuencoded stuff.  I try to
>make this description sufficient to allow reeaders to decide whether or
>not the article worth keeping.
>
>> * Compressed newsfeeds, which already impart whatever transmission
>>   efficiency gain LZW can offer, are circumvented and in fact
>>   sandbagged by the pre-compression of data.
>
>So sites with compressed newsfeeds don't care a whole lot, but those with
>uncompressed feeds DO care.  Any sites with little free disk space also benefit
>from the compression.

Actually this is a very incorrect assumption, very few newsfeeds any
more are not compressed in some way.  Compressing/uuencodeing/etc 
a posting neatly circumvents any compression.  The minimal savings
on disk space doesn't justify doubleing the phone time it costs
the article to get to the site.    Disk space is cheap, Memory
is cheap, in line compression is cheap. However *PHONE TIME* is 
expensive.   A lot of usenet is in the dialup world, and extra
phone costs that are needlessly added on, are not appreciated.

>But I don't want the network to translate my articles!
Yes you do, unless your posting binarys (which is another pain)

>When I post an article, there's a good chance that it will go from a
>UNIX machine, through BITNET, to another UNIX machine.  Because it
>went through BITNET, it will have been translated from ASCII into
>EBCDIC and back into ASCII.  This translation may leave scars:
Sites that have this problem, and they are getting rare, are already
dealing with this issue.  Dealing with them by costing the rest of
us more money is not a viable alternative.

Your code needs to be changed in the bitnet world, so it can be
used, people know that, software is written to do this for users
at those sites FOR users at those sites.  Automagicly so they
don't have to go dredging for utilities for such things.   You
have to expect that the site admins might know what they were
doing and are not blindly allowing software to hack up your
postings.

People know how to handle shar's its a nice standard for posting
sources.  If you have a binary, or an object that needs to be
posted as well then by all means compress and uuencode it.  But,
SHAR that with your sources and post your package that way.  It
makes more sense and is much more apprecated.

doug
__
Doug Davis/4409 Sarazen/Mesquite Texas, 75150/214-270-9226
{texsun|lawnet|texbell}!letni!doug or doug at letni.lonestar.org

                                                              "Be seeing you..."