Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: magnus@thep.lu.se (Magnus Olsson)
Subject: Some suggestions for FTP sites (was: Policy for code postings)
Message-ID: <1993Apr27.091721.16363@nomina.lu.se>
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Organization: Theoretical Physics, Lund University, Sweden
References: <schweda.735872562@vincent1.iastate.edu> <1rhgfiINNqi8@life.ai.mit.edu> <1riefsINN9aq@life.ai.mit.edu>
Date: Tue, 27 Apr 1993 09:17:21 GMT
Lines: 173

In article <1rhgfiINNqi8@life.ai.mit.edu>, dmb@case.ai.mit.edu (David Baggett) writes:
>In article <1993Apr26.165349.29869@nomina.lu.se> magnus@thep.lu.se (Magnus Olsson) writes:
>>shar doesn't assume that one has sh, test and sed. It only produces
>>files that _can_ be unpacked using those commands, but since the shar
>>format is so simple it's (almost) trivial to unpack them anyway.
>
>Yes, and I said as much later in my post.  You are concentrating on one
>aspect of the portable archive issue, which is the format that postings
>to this group should take.  Frankly, I don't really think it's useful
>to post any kind of archive to a discussion group, whether it's a
>(semi-)readable shar file or a completely opaque zip file.  The
>if-archive on ftp.gmd.de should make this kind of thing unnecessary.

I agree with you there - there shouldn't be any need to post archives
to this newsgroup. If people want to post a just smallish code
fragment they don't have to archive or compress it; on the other hand,
if their code is so large that it need compressing it's probably
better off at an FTP site.

However, what I was discussing was the issues that arise when people
nevertheless *do* want to post archives here.

>My question is more general.  When posting sources to archive sites,
>what format should we use?  I don't think shar is a good answer.  How
>many people have ever even heard of shar outside the net?  

Again, I agree that shar is not the best solution. 

>For that
>matter, how many (say) readers of this group would know where to get
>unshar for their Banana Jr. 2000 PC once TADS is ported to it next
>week?

On the other hand, people don't necessarily know where to get Zip for
their Banana Jr. 2000 either. 

A suggestion to archive maintainers: put README files at strategic
places on the FTP site that say what formats the files are in, and
where to obtain the software to unpack it.

>My feeling is that most people have heard of zip and know where
>to get it, esp. since the GNU project has adopted it.  But frankly I'm
>not very happy with the idea of using zip either.  Macintoshes are
>always a problem because you need to store file type and owner somehow,
>and only mac-specific archives do this.

That's my feeling, too. There actually is an excellent zip port on the
Mac, called ZipIt, that has a user interface very similar to StuffIt.

THe problem is that you still have to create the archive on a Mac to
get the creator and file type set correctly.

>Still, maybe the best answer is to just make directories on the
>if-archive and just put the source files in there unarchived.  My
>trepditation about that, however, is that people will grab only the
>"important" files and leave the other stuff like readme files or the
>"copying" file behind.

There's a big risk of that, yes. And it will also be a big waste of
bandwidth - compression saves a *lot* of space.

>>The question here is not only portability, but *readability*.
>
>Not as far as I see it.  I don't care if the files are gibberish as
>long as everyone can unpack them easily.

Remeber that I was talking about files posted to this newsgroup. On
ftp archives, the best solution would probably be zip archives.


In article <1riefsINN9aq@life.ai.mit.edu> dmb@ai.mit.edu writes:
>At the moment, most of the things posted on FTP sites that run on many
>machines run under Unix, so Unix-dependent utilities or methods that
>expect a general understanding of Unix are fine.  That's not OK for
>TADS-related files in my opinion.  Of the millions of DOS users out
>there, I expect only a small fraction have any familiarity with Unix.
>But those who are Unix-illiterate should still be able to play UU1.  Or
>read the CCR source code.  The net is not all Unix machines anymore.
>(If it ever was.)

Amen.

>So doing just what people do for other FTP sites is kind of a
>non-answer.  What people do on other FTP sites depends on what the
>audience is. 
[...]
>For the Mac audience, this is especially problematic, as I've mentioned
>here before.  Mac users don't want to hear some story about how easy it
>is to "unzoo" something -- they want to double click on the archive and
>have the stuff come out, as happens when they use StuffIt or Compact/Pro.

ZipIt for the Mac does have almost exactly the same user interface as
StuffIt. The problem is of course still the creator and file type.

>Of course, we could just post loose files in directories and hope that
>things stay together.  I'm sort of leaning towards this now, but for
>ADVENTIONS stuff I really don't want to risk having incomplete archives
>getting sent around.  E.g, if someone grabs Unnkulia 1/2 but leaves the
>order form behind then ADVENTIONS loses -- in lost sales, wasted time
>on answering questions that are in the info files, etc.  Finally, it
>seems to me that many users see packaged things as more professional
>than loose bundles of files.

Agreed.

[...]

>Yes, but it would be nice to have a single archive for all machines.
>Perhaps Mac things will always have to be kept separate because of the
>different file system.  I don't claim to know the answer, but I do know
>some of the problems.  Hopefully, they're clear now.  I can say that
>I've wasted a lot of time over the past year making three copies of
>every archive I've made, on three different machines.  It's a pain, so
>if there's a way around it, I'd like to change.  And it seemed to me
>that this was of interest to the group in general -- its your FTP
>site too.

Unfortunately, it seems as if for the time being, you'll just have to
handle the Macintosh case separately.

You can cut down on the number of file formats required in this way
(which is far from optimal, I know, but it will probably work):

Make the programs available as DOS-format zip archives. This will make
things easy for PC users. Then make sure the latest version of Unix
unzip is available on the same archive sites, making sure that there
are a lot of pointers to it along with the files. (Unix unzip converts
text files from DOS to Unix format if you specify the -a switch). Now,
you've taken care of both DOS and Unix users - avery high percentage
of all users - simultaneously.

If you can buy that the Mac users will have to do a little extra work,
you could also tell them to get the DOS zip files, together with
ZipIt. The problem is that they'll have to set the right creator and
file type. Wouldn't it be possible to write a small Mac program to do
that automatically, and distribute it along with the files?

Finally, we mustn't forget that there are systems where you jsut can't
run zip (or any other archiver, it seems). So far, nobody seems to
have been able to port zip to IBM mainframes, or example.

>>And as for posting TADS source to this newsgroup, why not just go ahead
>>and post it as regular text, as if you're posting a regular article.
>
>CCR is about 13,000 lines of TADS code.  My CCR directory on my hard
>drive is over a meg.  Posting big things to discussion groups is a huge
>waste of resources.

There are special newsgroups for posting big sources. Actually, I
think CCR would be suitable for submission to comp.sourecs.games,
provided the moderator will accept TADS source - and if he doesn't,
there's  comp.sources.misc, whose moderator has the policy of not
rejecting any serious submission (as far as I know). 


>>But this machine specific binary stuff troubles me -- especially for
>>those of us who can easily download ASCII text but have a helluva time
>>with binary.
>
>Have you asked someone at your site about this problem?  Is this a
>common problem for Mac users?  

Judging from the amount of traffic on "How can I download binary
files? What am I doing wrong?" in the IBM PC newsgroups (and it's much
more complicated on a Mac if you haven't got the right software), I'd
say it's a common problem for *all* users. Maybe there should be a
special "Beginner's Guide to Downloading" on ftp.gmd.de?

              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
