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From: schweda@iastate.edu (Christopher Schweda)
Subject: Re: Policy for code postings (was: TADS Source for Continuous Substances)
Message-ID: <schweda.735580624@vincent1.iastate.edu>
Keywords: physics
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Organization: Iowa State University, Ames IA
References: <C5vB0n.9z2@cantua.canterbury.ac.nz> <1993Apr23.100729.18501@nomina.lu.se>
Date: Fri, 23 Apr 1993 15:57:04 GMT
Lines: 79

In <1993Apr23.100729.18501@nomina.lu.se> magnus@thep.lu.se (Magnus Olsson) writes:

>In article <C5vB0n.9z2@cantua.canterbury.ac.nz> greg@huia.canterbury.ac.nz (Greg Ewing) writes:
>>This is the TADS source for a mini-adventure which includes a
>>moderately general system for handling substances that come in 
>>varying amounts.

>First, I'd like to thank you for posting this; I haven't had the time
>to look at it yet, but I'm sure I'll benefit from studying your code.

>However, I'd like to act a little bit as a wet blanket by pointing out
>that posting non-text  (in your case, a comrpessed and uuencoded file)
>to a discussion newsgroup is considered bad netiquette, if nothing
>else for the reason that not everybody has access to uudecode,
>decompress and tar.

>Maybe it's time to adopt a policy on the posting of code examples to
>this newsgroup? 

>My own views are these:

>* It's perfectly OK to post example *source*  to this group, as long as it
>  isn't too big. 

>* Complete games should probably go to comp.sources.games instead,
>  both so they can reach a bigger audience and because they tend to be
>  rather big.

>* Source code should be posted in the standard Usenet way, i.e. as a
>  multi-part shar archive. Uuencoded compressed files are meaningless
>  to many people (on non-Unix systems), but one can always unpack
>  a shar file by hand.

>* Executable files should *not* be posted here. There are special groups
>  for the posting of binaries. If people start posting binaries here,
>  some newsadmins may actually pull the plug on the entire newsgroup
>  (because of the risk for the spreading of viruses, the perceived
>  waste of bandwidth, and other reasons).


>This proposed policy is very similar to what holds on other
>newsgroups. 

>So, what do you guys think?


Yes! Sounds good to me!

But I'd like to add one small request to this policy list:


Please, please please: when posting Macintosh programs to ftp.gmd.de, could
the posters binhex them? For several months, I've been avid to get a  hold
of the Colossal Cave Revisited Source Code - but because it is posted in
a binary .tar.z format, I've been unable to download it. 

Again: please post binhex'd versions of Macintosh programs to ftp.gmd.de!
(ditto for updates to TADS. I'd *love* to be able to snag a binhex'd
version of the most recent update.)



Any opinions regarding this? Good idea? Bad idea? Seems to me TADS source
would be most helpful to *all* platforms if it was posted as *text* and
not compressed with system specific compressors.


Chris Schweda
==





>              Magnus Olsson                | \e+      /_
>    Department of Theoretical Physics      |  \  Z   / q
>        University of Lund, Sweden         |   >----<           
> magnus@thep.lu.se,  thepmo@selund.bitnet  |  /      \===== g
>PGP key available via finger or on request | /e-      \q
