Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!utcsri!utegc!utai!garfield!john13 From: john13@garfield.UUCP Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: I'll have a Blue Christmas... Message-ID: <3383@garfield.UUCP> Date: Fri, 26-Dec-86 19:36:34 EST Article-I.D.: garfield.3383 Posted: Fri Dec 26 19:36:34 1986 Date-Received: Sat, 27-Dec-86 05:37:19 EST Organization: CS Dept., Memorial U. of Newfoundland, St. John's Lines: 63 Keywords: sources executables downloads frustration [] This is quite distressing. The juggler looks great...until about the 3rd frame when the "Software error - task held" message comes up. Egad sounds great...until it tells me "File is not an object module". Shell 2.04M is great...this is the only thing to come over the net recently that works. All of the split files from the executables/data have joined and uudecoded with no problems. They have kept the same sizes when downloaded. But only one of 3 works! It's nice of people to take the time and effort to send these programs to the net, but in the forced absence of the mod.sources/ binaries moderator (would it really be that hard for someone else to shoulder the burden for a while? It *has* been several months!) I think that more care should be taken. "You all know the drill by now" for instructions? The executable for Egad was the first time I'd ever had to join files before downloading, and the picture data for the clown was my second. If the Atari16 newsgroup is any indication, we can expect a rash of "What is uudecode?" postings in the near future. Just a short explanation of how to unpack these things wouldn't add much to a ~60K file; perhaps the space could be saved by foregoing the .signatures at the end. Let's use a checksum for these files. This could save people (like me) from spending endless hours on the phone downloading only to find that they deleted one too many lines, or left on the .signature. My contribution to mod.amiga.sources: ------------cut here. compile with manx. usage "checksum"--------------- #include main(argc,argv) int argc; char *argv[]; { char c; long sum=0; FILE *fp; fp = fopen(argv[1],"r"); while ((c=fgetc(fp)) != EOF) sum += (long)c; fclose(fp); printf("Checksum is %ld.\n",sum); } -------sum is 32 bits here. adjust its type as necessary for your system------- At least this way, I can figure out if the executable is trashed while it's still here on the Unix system. And whoever posts it can tell if it was uploaded successfully. After this week, I've just about had it with Russian Roulette downloads (twice for Egad, once for the juggler). NOTE: This is not a flame; thank you John Draper, Matt Dillon, Andy Finkel et al for your efforts on behalf of the Amiga community. It's just pretty frustrating to have a couple of megs sitting around taking up space, and not knowing whether it doesn't work because of a stray carriage return or a glitch in the phone line or it was garbled en route. Now when's somebody gonna post the uuencoded form of that animated, raytraced frame-by-frame video I've heard about??? *:^) John PS Looks like it's a review of PageSetter next.