A readable, robust encoding for source postings

[Bengt Larsson]

In article <75110375 at bfmny0.BFM.COM> tneff at bfmny0.BFM.COM (Tom Neff) writes:
>In article <62-raymond-terry> raymond!terry at galaxia.newport.ri.us (Terry Raymond) writes:

>>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.
>
>There are ASCII archives out there.  The problem is enforcing a
>standard.

How about an RFC for a basic "shar" format? After all, there's RFCs for mail 
digest formats and such. The RFC could define a pretty fixed format (easy to
parse for foreign "unshars"), and it just happens to unpack itself using
"sh".

I think the "standard shar" should contain the "sed" command with "X" starting
lines, the "wc" check for (a little) security, and (maybe) the check
for overwriting files. Plus "#" for comments, "echo" for messages, and 
"exit" to skip signatures at the end. That should do it, short and simple 
(and KISS!)

Admittedly, the "shar" is Unix-centric, but it would be standardizing
existing practice (normally considered to be a Good Thing).

Comments?

Bengt L.

PS. I had a text archive format proposed last time this discussion was
    around. This would be more general than "shar". I suppose I could
    repost that, if there's any interest. 
DS.
-- 
Bengt Larsson - Dep. of Math. Statistics, Lund University, Sweden
Internet: bengtl at maths.lth.se             SUNET:    TYCHE::BENGT_L