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INFO-ATARI16 Digest         Sun,  6 May 90       Volume 90 : Issue  518
 
Today's Topics:
           v11INF1: Introduction to comp.binaries.atari.st
        v11INF3: Unpacking binaries (and retrieving old ones)
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Date: 7 May 90 01:34:21 GMT
From: sundc!newstop!male!panarthea.ebay.sun.com@seismo.css.gov  (Steven Grimm)
Subject: v11INF1: Introduction to comp.binaries.atari.st
Message-ID: <1740@male.EBay.Sun.COM>
 
Submitted-by: koreth@panarthea.ebay.sun.com (Steven Grimm)
Posting-number: Volume 11, Info 1
Archive-name: intro
 
This is the first of three introductory articles about comp.binaries.atari.st.
This one describes how to submit binaries to the newsgroup.  A companion
article lists all previously-published binaries, and a third article explains
how to retrieve and unpack binaries posted by others.
 
I am always looking for suggestions on how to improve the usefulness
of the newsgroup, and can be contacted as listed below.
 
-- Steven Grimm
   koreth@panarthea.ebay.sun.com
 
--------------------
 
Subject: Submitting binaries for publication
 
Items intended for posting or queries and problem notes should be sent to
atari-binaries@panarthea.ebay.sun.com. If you are on a UUCP-only site, you
can send them to 
 
If you're in Europe, you can send binaries to the European submoderator,
Jan-Hinrich Fessel, at unido!atari-binaries (or, if you're a masochist,
atari-binaries@unido.informatik.uni-dortmund.de.)  He will test them and
forward them to me.  Submitting to him saves net bandwidth, so it's
encouraged.
 
If you want verification of arrival, so say in a cover note, or at the
beginning of your submission, if it is small.  I try to verify that a
program works, and if I can't get it to work, I may hold up posting it
for a couple of days.  Please note that, except in rare cases, software
without documentation will not be published. The backlog from receipt
to posting varies from one to four weeks depending mostly on the set
of submissions currently in my queue.
 
If you are submitting both sources and binaries, PLEASE send the two
separately.  If I have to separate your sources from your binaries by
hand, your submission will most likely sit on the back burner for a
while.
 
Also, as of volume 8, I will only accept binaries packed with an archiver
for which source code is widely available.  For the time being, this pretty
much means arc, zoo, and lharc.  If you want to use a nifty new archiver,
make the source code available to the public (posting to comp.sources.atari.st
is fine.)  I reserve the right to repack binaries with another archiver if
the other archiver saves a significant amount of space, or has other
advantages.
 
If you're submitting a demo of a commercial program, or a shareware program,
please keep the amount of advertising to an absolute minimum.  The net
gods become angry when people try to use the net as a free advertising
medium, and I'd like to keep comp.binaries.atari.st out of trouble.  If
you want to solicit orders, do it in a README file or an About... dialog
box, not in a message that comes up every time the user does something.
In other words, treat the net like a PBS station (apologies to those
outside the US.)  I will not accept programs which I feel are excessively
commercial.  I'm aware that commercial demos and shareware are often very
useful (to the users on the net,) which is why I allow them at all.
 
--------------------
 
Subject: The structure of comp.binaries.atari.st articles
 
Each posting in comp.binaries.atari.st is called an "issue"; there are
roughly 100 issues to a volume.  The division is arbitrary and may vary.
There are two types of articles in comp.binaries.atari.st: binaries and
"information postings."  They can be distinguished by the subject line:
 
  Subject: v11INF2: Index and other info
 
This first word in the title identifies this as the third info posting of
volume six.  Similarly, the subject line shown below:
 
  Subject: v11i081: deadwrtr -- Ouija-word processor
 
identifies this as the 81st binary article in Volume 11.  Large programs are
broken up into smaller pieces, and have subject lines that look like
this:
 
  Subject: v11i041: zx81 -- Timex/Sinclair emulator  part04/39
 
Certain information about the system configuration required to use the
program is given on the keywords line.
 
  Keywords: uuencode, 1meg, medium, high
 
This means that the program requires at least one meg of RAM and runs in
medium or high resolution. Following is a list of keywords; new ones may
be added as needed. They are mostly self-explanatory.
 
  uuencode      - program is uuencoded (UNIX uudecode required to unpack)
  uue           - program is uuencoded (ST uud required to unpack)
  arc           - program is archived (arc required to unpack)
  zoo           - program is a zoo archive (zoo required to unpack)
  lharc         - program is an lharc archive (lharc required to unpack)
  high          - high resolution
  medium        - medium resolution
  low           - low resolution
  1meg          - needs 1 meg of RAM
 
The first few lines of an article are auxiliary headers that look like this:
 
  Submitted-by: jackt@atari.UUCP (Jack Tramiel)
  Posting-number: Volume 11, Issue 80
  Archive-name: rsn
 
The "Submitted by" is the author of the program.  If you have comments about
the binaries published in comp.binaries.atari.st this is the person to contact.
When possible, this address is in domain form, otherwise it is a UUCP bang
path relative to some major (backbone) site.
 
The "Reply-To:" header line in the article's main header points to the
submitter, to make commenting about binaries easier.
 
The second line repeats the volume/issue information for the aide of notes
sites and automatic archiving programs.
 
The Archive-name is the "official" name of this program in the archive.  Large
postings will have names that look like this:
 
Archive-name: desktop/part01
 
Since most archive sites run UNIX, articles are given UNIX-style filenames
rather than ST-style filenames.  I do make an effort to keep filenames to
8 characters or smaller, however.
 
--------------------
 
Subject: Reporting and tracking bugs and patches to postings
 
Updates to programs are usually announced in comp.sys.atari.st. When
large changes are made to a program, the entire thing will be reposted
to comp.binaries.atari.st.
 
To report bugs, contact the person listed in the Submitted-to header.
Often there is a contact address in a README file, too.  I do not maintain
the programs I moderate, so don't send your bug reports to me.
 
If the program documentation mentions some file that isn't included in
the posting (for instance, a font editor's documentation might refer to
some sample fonts), contact the submitter, not me.  I post articles in
their entirety, so if it isn't posted, I probably don't have it.
 
------------------------------
 
Date: 7 May 90 01:34:50 GMT
From: sundc!newstop!male!panarthea.ebay.sun.com@seismo.css.gov  (Steven Grimm)
Subject: v11INF3: Unpacking binaries (and retrieving old ones)
Message-ID: <1742@male.EBay.Sun.COM>
 
Submitted-by: koreth@panarthea.ebay.sun.com (Steven Grimm)
Posting-number: Volume 11, Info 3
Archive-name: unpack.cooked
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
             HOW TO USE COMP.BINARIES.ATARI.ST
 
                      by Steven Grimm
 
                  Last update: May 6, 1990
 
 
 
 
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
will contain executable (program) files.  Binaries are  dis-
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, two new archive  programs
called  "zoo"  and  "lharc"  can also be used to achieve the
same effect.  Zoo is  superior  to  arc  in  some  respects,
slightly  inferior  in  others, as is lharc.  Unfortunately,
you can't unpack a zoo archive with arc or  lharc,  or  vice
versa  (arc  and  lharc are similarly incompatible with each
other.)
 
_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
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Using Binaries                                           -3-
 
 
archives.
 
     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-
server@panarthea.ebay.sun.com.  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-
manager@panarthea.ebay.sun.com 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-
request@panarthea.ebay.sun.com 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!
 
     On UNIX systems, you can also say (for  instance)  "cat
part* | uud -" without renaming anything.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Using Binaries                                           -5-
 
 
     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
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.
Lharc is also available.
 
     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@
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Using Binaries                                           -6-
 
 
     panarthea.ebay.sun.com    mail      Official archives
archive@softvax.radc.af.mil    mail
unido!archive-server           mail      European archives
marks%mgse@rex.cs.tulane.edu   uucp      Ask your site administrator
 
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End of INFO-ATARI16 Digest V90 Issue #518
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