🚀 go-pugleaf

I received the following (thanks, Tony!):
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: t-jacobs@cs.utah.edu (Tony Jacobs)
Message-Id: <8808280114.AA17010@cs.utah.edu>
To: drew@cup.portal.com
Subject: Re: BinHex/ResEdit availability
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
In-Reply-To: <8483@cup.portal.com>
References: <34866@yale-celray.yale.UUCP> <186@rna.UUCP>
Organization: University of Utah CS Dept
Cc: 

You can anonymous FTP it from ix1.cc.utexas.edu in the 'pub' directory. It's
in a binhexed Auto-UnStuff format. Just unhex it and start it up and it un-
Stuffs itself.

-- p
Tony Jacobs * Center for Engineering Design * U of U * t-jacobs@ced.utah.edu
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Now, the only problem is that I don't understand it.  However, via
some experimenting, and some help from LaserMan@cup.portal.com (thanks,
LM!), I've learned some in the last day or two.  N.B.  This does NOT
make me an expert.

Apparently, usenet cannot handle binary files.  So, instead, people
convert binary files to "hex" files, which are really ascii files in
which the ascii characters represent hex digits; e.g., instead of the
value of (say) escape (which is 1B hex) stored as one byte, it is
stored as two bytes, with the first one ascii 1 (hex 31), followed by
a second byte represented ascii B (hex 72).  Get it?  So, binary to
hex really means binary to an ascii representation of the binary for
syustems that can handle only ascii files.
Also, I'm told that usenet limits file (article) size to something
like 40KB, so most executables (binaries) have to be broken into
separated files and recombined.

Program BinHex (version 5.0) does the translation of binaries to/from
so-called hex (really ascii) format.

Program StuffIt and Unstuffit combine and split large files into
pieces, and by the way, also do compression of the data, to reduce
the time to transfer and the space to store.

Portal (which is what I'm using) has a BBS which can store Macintosh
Binary format (MacBinary format) directly.  MacBinary, I think, is the
original binary plus some header information describing things like
name, creator, size, etc., and maybe some stuff about resource/data
fork (something weird in the Mac file system:  files are split into two
logical parts, or forks).  So, you can download directly from portal
and it just works.  No binhex, stuffit, or other junk.

Portal Communications Company
19720 Auburn Dr. 
Cupertino, CA  95014
(408) 973-9111 (voice)
(408) 725-0561 (data)
accessible via telenet, cheap,good, etc.

The comm program I'm using for downloading is Red Ryder.  V9.4 is shareware
available on Portal.  V10.3 is commercial.  It understands MacBinary.
Freesoft Co.
150 Hickory Dr.
Beaver Falls, PA  15010

Based on the above, I don't see how you could download BinHex from
usenet in readyu-to-use form.  It would have to somehow be encoded into
ascii, and you would need a decode program, which brings you back to where
you started.  Chicken and egg.

So, you could join portal.  Or, another suggestion would be to look
for Mac user groups.  They probably could help you.  There's probably
a list of them somewhere on usenet, but I'm too new to it to know where.

Good luck.