🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1ispmsINNtuc@ub.d.umn.edu> serickso@ub.d.umn.edu (Scott Erickson) writes:
>Previously David.White@launchpad.unc.edu (David White) wrote: 
>>- What's the deal with StuffIt and Compact Pro?  Are they just 2 rival,
>>incompatible file compressing programs?  Will either one decompress the other?
>Stuffit does not decompress Compact Pro.  I do not know if Compact Pro
>decompresses Stuffit files.

Well, depends. There are a number of programs that can decompress
Stuffit files. I strongly recommend Stuffit Expander 3.0, which can
handle BinHex, Stuffit and Compact Pro files. It can be found on
sumex-aim.stanford.edu in the directory /info-mac/util, if my memory
serves me right.

>>- What's the deal with BinHex?  Why are most uploaded programs in .HQX
>>format if it makes the file BIGGER?
>BinHex converts a binary file to a text file.  It seems that many programs
>can only handle text files.

It was my understanding that this is because some people still can't
use ftp. Instead, they must retrieve the files through an ftp server
that can send the files via e-mail. However, sending binary files via
e-mail will almost certainly fail, because e-mail is designed to
transmit ASCII text.

Binary files can contain any character without limitation. ASCII
files however only contain certain characters. There is a character,
for example, that may be used to indicate the end of a file. If that
character appeared somewhere in the middle of the file, then
everything after that would get lost. There are also various other
characters that have special meaning to the file transfer process.
There are ways to transfer binary files (in ftp you have to type
`binary' to set the transfer mode to binary), but e-mail is not one of
them.

Hope this helps,

Marcus
marcush@leland.stanford.edu