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Subject:  INFO-ATARI16 Digest V89 #518
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INFO-ATARI16 Digest         Fri, 13 Oct 89       Volume 89 : Issue 518

Today's Topics:
                  How to use comp.binaries.atari.st
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 13 Oct 89 14:33:19 GMT
From: grapevine!panarthea.ebay.sun.com![e-mail]  (Steven Grimm)
Subject: How to use comp.binaries.atari.st

[PostScript and *roff -ms versions of this document are available from me
 for those who wish to pretty-print them for posting on walls or whatever. -sg]






             HOW TO USE COMP.BINARIES.ATARI.ST

                      by Steven Grimm

               Last update: October 13, 1989




A preliminary note, for those of you who know  most  of  the
below  already:  the  official archives on panarthea are NOT
reachable via anonymous ftp from the Internet.  Read on  for
information  about  accessing them by mail, or see the table
at the end of this document for a list of alternate  archive
sites.


_✓1.  _✓W_✓h_✓a_✓t _✓a_✓r_✓e _✓b_✓i_✓n_✓a_✓r_✓i_✓e_✓s?

     Binaries are files that contain information other  than
normal  text.   Usually,  a binary that is posted to the net
w*ZNR3

tinct  from _✓s_✓o_✓u_✓r_✓c_✓e_✓s, which are the human-readable text files
that are interpreted by  a  computer  and  used  to  produce
binaries.   Sources  can  be modified with relatively little
effort, and are usually pretty easy to read.   Binaries  are
not intended to be viewed by a human.

_✓1._✓1.  _✓U_✓u_✓e_✓n_✓c_✓o_✓d_✓i_✓n_✓g

     The programs which transfer network news messages  (and
electronic  mail)  are not always capable of handling a pure
binary file.  They are designed to handle textual  messages,
and the odd symbols and characters in a binary cause them to
become confused, and often to mangle the binaries.  To avoid
this  problem, a method called _✓u_✓u_✓e_✓n_✓c_✓o_✓d_✓i_✓n_✓g is used.  Uuencod-
ing translates a binary file into text characters,  so  that
the  news  and  mail  transport programs won't mess up.  The
disadvantages are that uuencoded files are about 30%  bigger
than  the raw binary files they represent, and that you have
to go through one extra step to get the binaries to work  on
your computer.

_✓1._✓2.  _✓A_✓r_✓c_✓h_✓i_✓v_✓e_✓s _✓o_✓r "_✓a_✓r_✓c _✓f_✓i_✓l_✓e_✓s"

     Usually, a program will need more than one file to work
properly.   The extra files might be data files, help files,
or maybe some instructions for the user.  In order to easily
package  multiple  files together in one binary file, a pro-
gram called "arc" (short for "archiver") is used.  Arc  also
compresses  all  the  files as it packages them, so that the
arcfile take up less disk space  (and  takes  less  time  to
download!)  than  it  would if its contents were just thrown









Using Binaries                                           -2-


together.

     To confuse matters even more,  a  new  archive  program
called  "zoo"  can  also be used to achieve the same effect.
Zoo is superior to arc in some respects,  slightly  inferior
in  others.   Unfortunately,  you can't unpack a zoo archive
with arc, or vice versa.

_✓1._✓3.  _✓U_✓S_✓E_✓N_✓E_✓T _✓a_✓r_✓t_✓i_✓c_✓l_✓e_✓s

     The USENET has groups designed especially for transmis-
sion  of  binary  files.   They are usually called something
like "comp.binaries.x," where x is the type of machine  that
the programs will run on.  For Atari ST owners, the group to
watch  is  comp.binaries.atari.st.   Most  of  the  binaries
groups  (including  the Atari binaries group) are _✓m_✓o_✓d_✓e_✓r_✓a_✓t_✓e_✓d,
which means that you can't send a program directly to every-
one  on  the  network.   Instead,  you send it to someone in
charge of the group (the _✓m_✓o_✓d_✓e_✓r_✓a_✓t_✓o_✓r),  who  makes  sure  that
your program works and contains the proper documentation (or
that the lack of documentation is announced), and that  it's
in  the  correct  format  to  be sent out to the rest of the
USENET.

     One of the restrictions of the USENET is that  articles
can  only  be  a certain length.  If a binary is longer than
that, it must be split up into several parts, each no longer
than  45000 bytes or so.  This introduces yet another obsta-
cle to people who want to transform the articles into a use-
ful  form,  but  it  can't really be helped until the USENET
starts  running  much  more   advanced   news   transmission
software.   Also,  some  particularly  long  programs may be
posted over the course of several days;  otherwise  the  net
would  be  overloaded with lots of huge messages, and people
would complain.

     USENET binaries are grouped into _✓v_✓o_✓l_✓u_✓m_✓e_✓s, each contain-
ing  about  100  articles.   This is to make life easier for
people who are trying to keep track of which  articles  have
been  posted.   When  a new volume is started, the moderator
will usually post introductory articles, including a list of
previously published articles.

_✓2.  _✓H_✓o_✓w _✓d_✓o _✓I _✓g_✓e_✓t _✓b_✓i_✓n_✓a_✓r_✓i_✓e_✓s?

     There are two ways to get binaries: first,  by  reading
the  USENET  newsgroup  comp.binaries.atari.st; you will see
new articles within a week (usually much less) of  the  time
they  were  sent out by the moderator.  If, for some reason,
your site doesn't receive comp.binaries.atari.st, or if  you
want  to  look  through  previously  posted  articles,  site
panarthea.ebay.sun.com has all the binaries  stored  in  its
archives.










Using Binaries                                           -3-


     The other way to get binaries is to request  them  from
panarthea's archive server.  The archive server is a program
that intercepts incoming mail messages and  looks  for  com-
mands  inside  them.   You can tell it to list the available
binaries, give you help,  or  send  whichever  files  you're
interested  in.   The requested files will be mailed to you.
One thing to be  careful  of  is  that  multi-part  postings
aren't  placed  in  the  archives until all their parts have
been sent out to the USENET at large.  This  is  to  prevent
people  from  requesting all 99 parts of a program the first
day it appears, thus overloading the net and  defeating  the
purpose of piece-by-piece posting.

     To find out more about the archive server, send a  mail
message    containing    the   word   "help"   to   archive-
[e-mail].  Talk to an administrator  at
your  site  if that mail address doesn't work.  If you don't
get any response from the archive server within a few  days,
something      may      be      wrong;     mail     archive-
[e-mail] to report the problem.

     There  are  other   archive   sites,   too,   such   as
terminator.cc.umich.edu;    they   contain   most   of   the
comp.binaries.atari.st software as well as  some  additional
programs  that  have  not  appeared  on the newsgroup.  Some
sites, such  as  terminator,  also  offer  something  called
"anonymous  ftp"  if  you're  on  the  Internet.   Say  "ftp
terminator.cc.umich.edu",   and   if   you   connect,    use
"anonymous"  for  a  username, and your username for a pass-
word.  See the ftp  documentation  at  your  site  for  more
information.   A  recent,  but  possibly  incorrect, list of
alternate archive sites appears at the end of this  article.
Please send me mail if you know of any that aren't mentioned
here, or if my list is incorrect.  Note that panarthea  does
not  offer anonymous ftp, as it's on a network that's segre-
gated from the Internet.

     Panarthea also offers an "auto-index" service, for peo-
ple  who  don't  have  access  to the USENET groups.  If you
request autoindex service, you will receive  copies  of  the
archive-server's  index  files  for the binaries and sources
groups whenever new files are added.  Note that if your site
gets  comp.binaries.atari.st, requesting autoindex is point-
less and a waste of net bandwidth.  Send mail to  autoindex-
[e-mail] if you'd like to sign up.

_✓3.  _✓H_✓o_✓w _✓d_✓o _✓I _✓d_✓e_✓c_✓o_✓d_✓e _✓t_✓h_✓e
 _✓b_✓i_✓n_✓a_✓r_✓i_✓e_✓s?

     As stated above, turning binaries from USENET  articles
into a more useful form can be a multi-step process.  At the
least, you will need the uudecode program;  it  is  standard
software on most UNIX|✓- systems and is available in a  couple
_________________________
|✓- UNIX is a trademark of Bell Laboratories.









Using Binaries                                           -4-


of forms on the Atari.  Versions for other operating systems
do  exist,  and can certainly be written with little effort.
Arc is available for UNIX and other operating  systems,  but
is  not  standard  software.   In any case, you will want at
least arc on your Atari.

     A version of uudecode written in ST BASIC is  available
in  panarthea's  archives (see above).  It is in volume 1 of
the  comp.sources.atari.st  directory  (note   that   that's
_✓s_✓o_✓u_✓r_✓c_✓e_✓s  and  not binaries).  Once you have that, you should
get the files "arc," "arcdoc," and "uucode" from volume 1 of
the  binaries  directory.  They contain the arc program men-
tioned earlier, its documentation, and a much better, faster
version of the uudecode program.

     Use the BASIC  program  to  uudecode  the  two  encoded
files;  then  use  arc  to  unpack  the  better  version  of
uudecode.  (Arc is documented in "arcdoc.")   Note  that  if
you're  reading news/receiving mail on a computer (such as a
UNIX system) that already has uudecode, you can skip most of
this;  you  will  probably  just want to uudecode arc there,
then download it (using kermit,  xmodem,  or  your  favorite
transfer  protocol  -  consult your site's administrator and
your Atari communication package's  documentation  for  more
information.   Remember  to use binary mode when downloading
arc files!)

     So far, everything has been small enough to fit in  one
piece,  but  you will almost certainly want to try something
larger eventually.  The Atari "uud"  program  (whose  source
code,  also  suitable  for  compilation  on UNIX systems, is
available in the  sources  archive)  is  capable  of  easily
decoding  multi-part  uuencoded files.  Near the top of each
part (except the first) will be a line like

        begin part c foobar.uac


     Rename each file (except part 1,  which  can  be  named
"part01" or just about anything else) to the name at the end
of this "begin" line, in this case "foobar.uac".   Then  run
uud  on the file containing part 1; it contains instructions
to cause uud to look for the other parts.   If  you  have  a
text  editor or a UNIX style cat program, you can just stick
all the parts together in order and run uud on the resulting
(big)  file;  it  will  try to go on in the first file if it
can't find the next part in a separate file.  Note that  uud
won't  warn  you  if  it's  overwriting an existing file, so
don't give any of the parts the same name as the file that's
being extracted from them!

     If you don't have uud or would prefer  to  decode  your
binaries  on  your  larger  news  computer, the procedure is
somewhat more complex.  Plain vanilla uudecode doesn't  know









Using Binaries                                           -5-


about  multi-part  uuencoded  files,  so you have to fool it
into thinking that everything is in one part.  First,  stick
all  the  parts  together  (using  cat  on  UNIX).  Edit the
resulting file.  Now remove all the extraneous lines of text
in  between  the  parts  --  this includes mail headers, any
text, lines of the form "include foobar.uad," "table"  lines
and  the  lists  of  characters  following them, and "begin"
lines other than the one at the beginning of part  1.   Once
you  have  converted all the parts into a big uuencoded mass
(with no blank lines!), the regular  uudecode  program  will
work.

     Obviously, this is  something  of  a  hassle,  and  the
recommended procedure is to try to install uud on your large
computer.  You'll usually want to  minimize  the  amount  of
data  you  have  to  send  to  your Atari, since you'll most
likely be downloading it at a relatively low speed, and  the
uudecoded .arc file is the smallest thing you can download.

     Zoo is available from the archives.  It  is  simple  to
use; refer to the documentation included in zoobin.arc (yes,
you need to use arc to extract zoo!) for  more  information.
The uudecoding process is the same for zoo and arc files.

     Most  archives  contain  documentation;  refer  to  the
instructions in a specific program for usage information and
the like.  If you have problems with a  particular  program,
send  mail  to  the  submitter  (listed near the top of each
part.)  The moderator doesn't have time to become very fami-
liar with all the programs that are posted, so the submitter
will probably be much more helpful.


_✓4.  _✓L_✓i_✓s_✓t _✓o_✓f _✓a_✓r_✓c_✓h_✓i_✓v_✓e _✓s_✓i_✓t_✓e_✓s

     Note: I have not verified these, so this  list  may  be
wrong.   Mail  servers  usually  respond  to the word "help"
alone in a mail message.  Some of the sites listed below may
not  contain  full  archives  of comp.binaries.atari.st, and
some may have other files.

Address                        Type      Comments
____________________________________________________________________
wuarchive.wustl.edu            ftp,nfs
ux.acss.umn.edu                ftp       TeX, GNU
terminator.cc.umich.edu        ftp       Mail server may also exist
him1.cc.umich.edu              ftp       cd to pc7: directory
dsrgsun.ces.cwru.edu           ftp       GNU and Minix archives also
xanth.cs.odu.edu               ftp
archive-server@
     panarthea.ebay.sun.com    mail      Official archives
[e-mail]    mail
unido!archive-server           mail      European archives
[e-mail]   uucp      Ask your site administrator

------------------------------

End of INFO-ATARI16 Digest V89 Issue #518
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