A readable, robust encoding for source postings

[raymond!terry at galaxia.newport.ri.us]

As long as the discussion about packing source code has been reopened,
how about extending the discussion to include alternatives to shar.
In addition to USENET postings being routed to different networks with
some character incompatiblities there are also now a large number of non-unix
machines connected to the network.  While these machines do not have SH with
which to unpack a shar posting, there are unshar program that will unpack
some of the shar postings, I have a couple.  Note, I said some of the postings.
The trouble is there is always a new version of shar being used which breaks
the old unpackers, mine cannot unpack the latest distributions.  Also, the
source code for these unpackers is not widely distributed, which makes it
difficult to change it or for newcommers to obtain one.  Furthermore, there
has been some concern expressed about the security of using shar.  Therefore,
I am suggesting that there be some serious discussion about using a packing
format, with distributed code as is done with uudecode, to replace shar.

Comments anyone?

raymond!terry at galaxia.newport.ri.us
{rayssd,xanth,lazlo,mirror,att}!galaxia!raymond!terry