From: rknop@cco.caltech.edu (Robert Andrew Knop)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.cbm
Subject: Re: Cwaves is still here
Date: 11 Dec 1992 17:39:54 GMT
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
NNTP-Posting-Host: punisher.caltech.edu

csbruce@neumann.uwaterloo.ca (Craig Bruce) writes:

>wolfy@stein.u.washington.edu (Stephen) writes:

>>	To the general public: After seeing the dismal file selections that 
>>even the more popular FTP sites offer, I've decided to help out the Internet
>>a little.  I will be, in the next few weeks, sending many demos to this FTP
>>site:
>>			ftp.cco.caltech.edu
>>
>>	The demos will be zipped, and sometimes Lynxed.  I may have a seperate
>>directory on the system, but I have yet to talk with the individual who
>>runs it.  If you are reading this, please mail me.

>The man you seek is "rknop@cco.caltech.edu", Rob Knop.

>BTW, I may or may not be the only one, but I cannot stand all of those exotic
>archiver formats.  Do you think you could also upload your files in good ole
>uuencoded format?  If there are multiple files, concatenate their uuencoded
>data together (a ".uua" archive).  You can even include the instructions at
>the top of such a file.  See the file "ace-r5.uua" in the "INCOMING"
>subdirectory at that site for an example.

Um.

First, on archive formats, I have to admit that I must agree with Craig that
all of these "exotic" archiver formats do get tiresome.  However: I disagree
that uuencoding should be the archiver of choice.  Here's the deal: we have
two finite resources, space and time.  There is a finite amount of space on
the ftp site.  People have a finite amount of time that they want to dedicate
to transferring files.  THUS: an archive that compresses is GREATLY preferred.
This is why I don't like uuencoding, because that actally _expands_ the files
being archived.

As to Lynx: Lynx also does no compression, and thus is inferior on that count.
Also, because there are so many different versions of Lynx out there is always
some guesswork involved in getting the files dearchived.  The fewer Lynxed
files that show up on the ftp site, the happier I am.

PROPOSED STADNARD(S): I would ask that anything anybody uploads which is
longer than a few K be archived in .arc, .lzh, .sda, or .sfx format.  The
preferred one would probably be .sfx, since that is simple for people to
disslve, and the same archive can be dissolved on botha 64 and a 128.

.arc, NOT the MS-DOS .arc, but the C64/C128 .arc, is a stable and standard
enough format that most anyone should be able to dissolve it, using either
ARC-64 (which I will endeavor to get on the site) or CS-DOS (on the 128, which
is already on ccosun).

.sda's should come with a note specifying whether the .sda is for the 128 or
for the 64.

If people do this, it will take the guesswork out of dissolving files.  Also,
it will reduce the amount of space on the ftp site taken up by the C= files.

As to uploading megs and megs of demos: I am already in contact with another
person who wants to upload ca. 10 Megs of demos, and am making sure that I
will remain in the good graces of the system folks here if the site grows that
large.  Email me before making any major uploades.

If the site is going to get stacked with huge numbers of demos, we might have
to leave them there for limited amounts of time, so that all the demos won't
be up at once.  Personally, I would like to see ample amounts of demos,
applications, and the like, and not have them shoved out of the way by
tremendous amounts of C64 demos.

If anybody has stuff that they want to upload which isn't tremendously huge,
feel free to do so, and drop me an Email message letting me know that you've
done so.

I've been quite busy in the last month, and thus haven't been able to keep up
here on comp.sys.cbm or to keep the ftp site up to date, so right now there is
a huge stack of stuff in INCOMING which I need to deal with. This will happen
in good time....

Thanks for your patience...

-Rob
Newsgroups: comp.sys.cbm