🚀 go-pugleaf

>I would like to pose the question:  Why use shar?

Simply because you can look at a shar file directly to see if the
shar'd stuff is of interest or not.  For those people where the process
of getting stuff from news into their ST is time-consuming or expensive, 
the shar'd file is a big win.

A secondary consideration might be the cost to the net of shipping the
shar'd or arc'd file(s).  I believe that Unix sites generally run the
news articles through a file compression program.  Generally,
compressing a text file will result in a smaller file than compressing
an already compressed file.  So arc'd collections of files may be
_more_ expensive distribute through news than shar'd files.

With the problems I have occasionally had with shar'd files, I tend to
prefer using arc.   On the other hand, it is quite easy for me to get
things from news articles into my ST.  I would expect other people to
feel differently.

========================================
Preston L. Bannister
USENET	   :	ucbvax!trwrb!felix!preston
BIX	   :	plb
CompuServe :	71350,3505
GEnie      :	p.bannister