Unnecessary tar-compress-uuencodes

[David Dick]

In <15652 at bfmny0.BFM.COM> tneff at bfmny0.BFM.COM (Tom Neff) writes:

>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.

> But the price for this is heavy:

> [ list of significant reasons omitted ]

This is the biggie!

> * 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.

As the net expands to encompass a larger and more diverse audience
the familiarity with arcane encoding methods becomes rarified.
The whole point of the original "shar" was that it only assumed 
a shell and a few commands which everyone on the fledgling USENET
had.

Even among the cognoscenti propogation of new tools and processing
methods is not guaranteed; the time pressures of a job can interfere!

I think making a significant change in distribution procedures for
the benefit of one adjunct to USENET (BITNET), to the disadvantage of much
of the rest of the net, is a bad idea.

David Dick
Software Innovations, Inc. [the Software Moving Company (sm)]