There are two reasons to transfer files between a Macintosh and another computer. One is to use the other computer as a holding place for Macintosh files. This sort of use can be termed ╥archiving.╙ In this case it is not important for the file to be in a format understood by the other computers, since it will only be transferred back to a Macintosh. It is important to be able to retrieve the file exactly as it was saved. Fetch supports three file formats that are suitable for archiving Macintosh files: MacBinary II, AppleSingle and BinHex. A file stored in any of these formats can be reconstructed without any loss of information (for instance the file type, icon, and original name will be preserved).
This sort of file transfer can be used to distribute software over a large area. There are several large archives of Macintosh programs on the Internet, most notably the Info-Mac archives on sumex-aim.stanford.edu. These archives allow anyone to retrieve files and typically store the files in MacBinary II or BinHex format.
The other reason to transfer files between different computers is so that they can be used by programs on each machine. Due to the peculiarities of the Macintosh and its software there are few files that can be shared with other computers this way. The most common type is the text file (see the ╥Glossary╙ topic for a definition of text file). Most computers have programs that use text files and most Macintosh word processors allow you to save documents as text. Fetch allows you to move text files to and from other computers, and offers the option of word-wrapping (see ╥Wrapped Text╙ and ╥Filled Paragraphs╙ under ╥Reference╙).
There are a few kinds of non-text files that can be used on a Macintosh and other computers. Examples include compressed text files (created with the Unix¬ compress program or MacCompress) and files created with tar or MacTar. These files can be transferred to a Macintosh with the Binary files option and transferred to other computers in the ╥Raw Data╙ format (see ╥Raw Data╙ under ╥Reference╙).
