Unnecessary tar-compress-uuencodes

[Tom Neff]

We have recently seen a spate of "source" postings in "uuencoded
compressed TAR" form, instead of SHAR or other traditional plain text
formats.  Now, possibly in response, we are seeing tools to manipulate
this format posted.  This is a bad trend!  Let's not encourage it
further.

The supposed advantage of shipping files this way is that when all the
decoding is finally done on the receiver's machine, you are guaranteed
the exact byte stream that existed on the source machine -- apparently a
very seductive feature for some authors.  But the price for this is
heavy:

 * Readers can no longer easily inspect the source postings BEFORE 
   installation, to see if they merit further interest.  Often they
   must spend the time and disk space to unpack everything before
   deciding whether to keep or delete it.  Nor are the usual article
   scanning tools such as rn's '/' and 'g' commands useful.

 * Compressed newsfeeds, which already impart whatever transmission
   efficiency gain LZW can offer, are circumvented and in fact
   sandbagged by the pre-compression of data.

 * Crucial source format conversions such as CR/LF replacement, fixed
   or variable record encoding, ASCII/EBCDIC translation, etc, which
   automatically take place in plain text news/notes postings, are
   again circumvented; users in alien environments are left with
   raw UNIX format bitstreams to deal with.

 * The format presupposes the existence of decoding tools which may
   or may not be present in a given environment.  Non-UNIX users who
   lack some of the automated extraction facilities we take for
   granted -- but who can still hand separate a few simple SHAR's into
   something useful -- are left out in the cold.

These objections are not just quibbles -- they cut to the heart of the
question of what a worldwide source text network is supposed to be
about.  News is not mail; news is not a BBS.  The "advantages" of
condensing source postings into gibberish are not worth the drawbacks.

NOTE: When it is occasionally necessary to distribute small, effectively
binary files (i.e., the precise bistream is important) together with
larger "vanilla" source postings, as with a LaserJet printer manager,
then JUST those special files should be encoded (not compressed) with a
simple translator like 'btoa' or uuencode, and the resulting text
included in the otherwise plaintext archive.
-- 
Psychoanalysis is the mental illness   \\\    Tom Neff
it purports to cure. -- Karl Kraus      \\\   tneff at bfmn0.BFM.COM