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1995-02-04
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UUdeview Manual
***************
This text mainly covers the Unix and DOS versions of UUdeview, where
the decoding process is all the same. Some of the text here does also apply
to the users of UUdeview for Windows.
While all of the below actions can be used with UUdeview for
Windows, you will usually use the Launcher application to ease the
decoding procedure. I recommend reading through the Windows
Installation and Usage manual first; and then reading the rest of the
text, skipping the sections that don't apply to you.
I expect you to have properly installed the program by now.
Running UUdeview
================
Once you have saved the articles into one or many files, you can start
UUdeview. Get to the command line, and type
uudeview [options] <filename(s)>
If you had to save the articles into different files, you can also enter
wildcards for the filename (as in "file*.txt").
UUdeview should now scan the article file(s), show you which articles it
has found, and combine different parts. In some cases, SPMS will also try
to correct some of the poster's errors. At the end of this scanning process,
it will report which file it has found, and then switch to command mode. You
can now enter commands to decode the file, rename it or to do a couple of
other more or less weird things with the file.
The default command is `?`, which will inform you of your choices. See
below for the other commands
UUdeview's options
==================
Each option is exactly one character. The option can be switched 'on' by
preceding it with a plus sign or switched 'off' by preceding it with a minus
sign. What 'on' and 'off' means is not always obvious, so look out below.
Note: If you use UUdeview for Windows, you can use these options
by defining them in the Launcher's Additional Options menu.
However, most of the work is automatically done from within the
Options menu.
+e
Describes a set of extensions to be decoded exclusively. You must
line up the extensions, each one preceded by a dot with no space
between two extensions.
+e .jpg.JPG.gif.GIF instructs the program to ignore
postings other than jpg or gif pictures. Note that the extension
check is case sensitive. All this has to change sometimes, because
this doesn't allow double extensions (like in .tar.gz).
-e
is the reverse of +e. Here, you can give a set of extensions that the
program should ignore, with the same limitations as above.
-e .bmp.BMP tells the program to process everything but
Windows Bitmap files.
Please note that each 'e' option cancels all previous ones. Only the
last 'e' option is used. Despite their limits, both options are quite
useful in conjunction with the following one.
-i
Tells UUdeview do process the files without user interaction. That
is, all files are decoded to the current directory without asking
(batch decoding). With the 'e' options, you can direct the program
not to process some types of files.
+e .jpg.gif -i automagically decodes all pictures.
Similarly, '+i' will enable user interaction; but this is really not
needed because it's the default.
-r
Instructs the program not to ignore replies. Usually, replies in
postings do not feature useful binary data, so they are ignored to
save space and time. Only in some cases it might be useful not to
ignore them, especially when decoding mail folders.
Similarly, '+r' will cause replies to be ignored; which is the default.
+u
Given this option, UUdeview will try to uncompress or gunzip the
current file, if it has the '.z' or '.gz' extension. This feature is quite
untested so far, and after all it only works if you have uncompress
and gunzip installed.
Again, '-u' tells UUdeview not to uncompress files, which again is
the default behaviour.
+d
Sets the desperate mode, in which the program will also process
incomplete files. Everything until the first missing part will be
decoded (if the first part is missing, nothing is decoded). The reason
is that there are no file formats (except plain text) that can recover
from missing data. '-d' is default (the program hopes that you don't
get desperate too frequently).
-p path
Sets the decoding path, that is, the path, where decoded binaries
will be saved to. If you use the program interactively, you can also
set it from within the program.
There is no such thing as a +p option.
UUdeview startup
================
Upon startup, the program will scann all the given files for uuencoded data.
It prints out some information that was primarily included for debugging
purposes, but maybe it can help you to understand what the hell it is doing.
It does three steps before prompting you for anything, loading, combining
and merging.
Loading
+++++++
All different postings are detected (that is, anything with a subject line). For
each posting, one line with the subject and some information is printed.
Here is part of an example:
Loaded 'profavi.zip part 0/0 THE_AVI (Description)' 0
Loaded 'profavi.zip, part 01/15 THE_AVI' profavi.zip begin data 1
Loaded 'profavi.zip, part 02/15 THE_AVI' data 2
...
Loaded 'profavi.zip, part 15/15 THE_AVI' end data 15
The text in quotes is the original subject line. The number after the subject
is the part number which uudeview has detected. If a 'begin' line is
encountered, 'begin' is printed along with the file name (here: 'profavi.zip'),
if 'end' is found, it is printed as well. If a posting contains uuencoded data,
the keyword 'data' is printed. In some cases, UUdeview might be unable to
detect the data, and you will wonder why a certain program is not
presented for decoding. You will be able to detect this case here; get
suspicious if there are parts without the word 'data'.
Combining
+++++++++
Now UUdeview combines all parts of one file, that is, all the postings with
the same subject line (well, subject line minus part number, of course). For
each file, it reports which parts have been found. Again, it is printed if the
postings have 'begin' and 'end' lines. In the case of the above posting, the
program reports
Found File 'profavi.zip' Part NOs 0 1 begin 2 ... 15 end OK
The OK at the end means that everything seems to be OK with this file and
that it is ready to being decoding.
Merging
+++++++
In some cases, the SPMS system will step in, desperately trying to recover
from the mistakes of the poster. Here's an example:
Loaded 'WinG (1/2) Ok, someone wanted WinG' wing10.zip begin data 1
Loaded 'WinG10.zip (2/2) First One was huge, this is TINY' end data 2
Found File 'wing10.zip' Part NOs 1 begin
Found File 'WinG10.zip' Part NOs 2 end
Parts of 'WinG' merged with parts of 'WinG10.zip'. Check 1 begin 2 end OK
Here, the poster has made the mistake of posting two parts of the same file
with a different subject line. Both parts are detected, but are 'combined'
seperately. Now, SPMS detects that the first posting was sent as part one,
which only had a beginning but no end. The other posting had part two and
no beginning but an end. Therefore, it merges these separate postings into
a file with two parts, which then has a beginning and an end. It then
rechecks the newly created file and finds it OK.
UUdeview commands
=================
Finally, after all the startup crap is done, you will be prompted what to do
with each file (if you have not disabled interactivity with the '-i' option).
The program asks you for an action, and presents '?' as the default action,
which will give you a short list of all available actions. There are the
following:
(?)
(default action) gives a short list of all available actions.
(d)
decodes the file and writes it to disk. Files are always written to the
directory where you have started uudeview. Therefore, you should
always start up uudeview from your binaries directory (I always
change to /tmp).
(y)
'yes', does exactly the same as (d)
(n)
Do not decode this file and go to the next file.
(i)
Show file Info. Prints out the zeroeth part of the file if available, or the
first part up to the beginning of encoded data. Some of the most
annoying headers are stripped.
(e)
Run a shell command. The best part is, you can actually use the
actual file as part of the command! Simply enter a dollar sign '$'
where the filename shall appear. If you have xv installed, you can
view a picture before decoding by entering "xv $". Note that the
shell will not get the actual filename but a temporary filename. Using
programms that depend on any filename extension (rather than
some magic number) will fail.
Note: This action is not available in UUdeview for Windows.
(l)
will list a text file. You'll get a lot of junk if you try this command on
anything other than text files. This is the same as the (e) command
with "more < $".
(r)
prompts you for an alternate filename. If you later (d)ecode the file, it
will be written under this new filename. Any directory will be
stripped from this filename.
(p)
allows you to change the save path, that is, the directory where
decoded binaries will be saved to. You can see the present path in
the command description (which you get with the (?) action).
(q)
quits the program without prompting for all the other files.
(c)
displays the copyright notice and some other blah.
Frank Pilhofer <fp@informatik.uni-frankfurt.de> Back to the Homepage
Last modified: Wed Feb 1 14:26:45 1995