On Thu, 20 Aug 2009 11:46:51 -0400, Gary R. Schmidt wrote
(in article ):

hielan' laddie wrote:
[SNIP]
Every single binary posted to USENET is encoded in some way. All of them.
It's just that MSOE knows about some encoding methods but not others, while
real NNTP clients know about the others.
True.

If you don't wish to use yENC, that is of course your choice. I prefer to
use
it. That is _my_ choice. You no like? Me no care.

Now if the programs that are used to *post* the yENC'ed images were to
adhere to NNTP posting RFC's, that'd be useful.

AFAICT, *none* of the yENC posting programs reliably "do the right thing."

In my experience yENC posts show up exactly as any other posts do. I usually
can't tell the difference... until someone complains that they can't read it
because they have chosen to not get one of the free or cheap utilities which
will decode yENC for them. At which point I laugh at them.


And I'm not putting a stupid proxy between my newsreader and my NNTP
server just to be able to view mangled posts.


1 you don't have to put any kind of a proxy between your newsreader and a
server to read yENC posts. You can get a real newsreader which will read them
directly, or you can download them as text and have a utility convert them
after the fact. And they are hardly 'mangled' if they are delivered properly
to those who have real newsreaders and/or decoding utilities.

The newsreader I first used would not decode _any_ binaries on its own; it
_did_, however, come with a Read Me which pointed me to where I could get
'helper apps' which _would_ decode binaries. And could be set up so that
binary posts would be automatically piped to those helper apps and decoded on
the fly. This was back in 1994. (It wouldn't post binaries, either... except
when encoded by those same 'helper apps'. It was free, the helper apps were
free, and it worked.)

But, hey, man, do what you want. You don't like yENC? Cool. Don't download
any yENC files. Kill all yENC posts. Ignore yENC posts. Whatever. That's
_your_ choice, on _your_ system. I simply don't care what _you_ want to do on
_your_ system. _My_ choice on _my_ system is to use yENC for every single
binary I post. _My_ system. _My_ choice. You no like? Me no care.

_You_ don't see all the posts, because _you_ don't want to use yENC. Carry
on, by all means. _I_ will continue to see all the posts, including yENC
posts. _I_ will post using yENC. And if you don't like it, that's just too
damn bad for you.