From: Lynda Fincham <gaea@zooid.guild.org>
Subject: Tiny-FAQ for alt.binaries.pictures
Organization: ZOOiD BBS
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 08:03:49 GMT

pprior@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Paul A Prior) writes:
Someone else writes:
Oleg writes:
>> OK> You can post these gifs to alt.binaries.pictures or whatever the
>> OK> appropriatae alt.binaries group is.  If you do post, please announce it
>> OK> here.  I, for one, would like to use a lily as my screen background.
>>
>>I am just going to have to figure how this alt.binaries.pictures works.  I
>>have read about it for quite some time now, and it is time to learn more.  I
>>will request that news group for my system, and see if I can figure out how it
>>works.
>>
>I would like to learn more about this as well.  A certain mailing group
>which will remain nameless recently flooded my mailbox with >5MB of 
>GIFS and my account blew chunks for days (quotas...).  I do, however,
>want to have access to the GIFS that come across the binaries groups 
>because it seems like there are some good fish ones.  Could someone
>explain how we go about doing this?  I use TRN to read news.  Is this
>group simply a group where you "read" the message and capture it then
>decode it or something?  If so, please post directions on how to use
>it - perhaps a FAQ?

Well, here's my idea of a basic FAQ for alt.binaries.pictures:

Binary files are posted to alt.binaries.pictures (duh...). They are usually
broken up into 64K maximum file size. The files are encoded using a program
called uuencode (very common on unix-type systems, might be harder to find for
other types of operating systems, but it's out there).

To post, you'll have to first break up your file into pieces smaller than 64K
(there are programs to do this, but I'm not sure what they're called. Remember
that 64K piece of a picture will be bigger when it's uuencoded (again, I'm not
sure how much bigger)). 64K is the maximum accepted limit to post in one piece
to a *.binaries group. To uuencode your picture - on a unix-type system type 
 "uuencode ork picture > bleh" where uunecode is the command, ork is the file
that you want to encode, picture is the name of the file when someone decodes
it, and bleh is the name of the file once it's encoded. It's a little
confusing syntax to use, you might want to read the manual pages on your
system to see if it works differently than on mine (I'm using Xenix 2.3.2).
Then you can post your message, one piece after another, making sure they're
numbered correctly. 

To save a picture from a *.binaries group using TRN (or RN), just use "s" or
"w", TRN will automatically append new files on the end. Once you've got all
the pieces in one file, remove all the headers and gunk at the top (including
description) so it's one big binary file. Then type "uudecode filename" where
filename is the name you gave the binary file. It will unencode itself into
whatever file the person wanted it to be called. Then you can view it.
There is another way to get the file back together, you can save each
individual posting to sequential files, and then run a program called "uucat"
on them to remove the header, and pipe it to uudecode (ie "uucat picture1
picture2 picture3 picture4 | uudecode").

This is a fairly basic and straightforward FAQ, I didn't put a lot of nitty
gritty in, you should probably read the FAQ for alt.binaries.pictures,
especially if you plan on posting there, it's about 500 lines long. It has a
long expiry date, so it should exist on most systems. If it doesn't exist on
your system, I'll be happy to email it to you, or post it to this group if
there is enough demand for it. 

I hope this gives you a little basic understanding, but if you plan to do any
serious work in alt.binaries.pictures I *strongly* recommend that you read the
FAQ. You might be able find it easier in alt.binaries.pictures.erotica, there
seems to be a good deal more postings going through there than in
alt.binaries.pictures... :)

---
Gaea (Lynda Fincham aka Mother Nature)   gaea@zooid.guild.org
ZOOiD Online, Toronto, Canada            (416) 322-7876
Free and Paid Public Access Usenet       (416) 322-0920
"It's easy to spot the optics."
Newsgroups: alt.aquaria