Re: [Pan-users] Pan and yenc encoding of binary files

[Duncan]

Cipher Cipher posted on Sat, 09 Feb 2013 19:44:57 -0500 as excerpted:

> 1. I have no trouble downloading binary files from Usenet, .pdf, .mobi,
> epub, etc.
> 2. The ones I upload (same file types), I can download fine.
> 3. Other people, notably windows users with Forte, say my posts contain
> zero byte files, they cannot see the content.
> 
> Mint Linux/Mate 64
> 
> Is there some setting I am missing?  Any help appreciated...

The first setting you're missing is the setting to turn off HTML messages 
when posting to the pan list.  I suppose you know how irritating HTML can 
look in pan, and a number of people use pan to read this list, via 
gmane.org's list2news interface.  Just sayin...


After some quick googling...

You mention Forte users, but there's no clue whether they're free-agent 
(which is free) users or agent ($30 to purchase, $20 to upgrade from any 
earlier major version) users.  From my googling it looks like Forte Free 
Agent doesn't support yenc.  Forte Agent has since 1.91 (released in 
2002, looks like Agent 7.0 is current).

Actually, Free Agent may not be distributed any longer and may not have 
been distributed for awhile now, but it's still worth checking, to be 
sure.

If they're using current agent, it's very possibly a pan bug.  After all, 
pan's binary posting is a fairly new feature, and I'm not sure how many 
people actually use it and would report bugs on it if they saw them, so 
it's quite possible the feature is not yet fully debugged.  Of course it 
could also be a propagation issue unless both they and you are using the 
same news servers and thus you're getting the same message from the same 
server using pan that they are using agent.  


One thing either they or you can try is using agent/pan's save-as-text 
feature (mentioned on one page I googled, I assume agent still has it, 
pan certainly does, and this might work for free agent users as well, 
assuming it has a save-as-text option).  It's then possible to use a 
separate yenc decoder app to try to decode from the raw text posts, maybe 
with debug turned on if necessary to see what errors/warnings it spits 
out, if any.

For Linux, uudeview is a command-line based decoder that I've used from 
time to time and still have installed for manual en/decoding if need be.  
IIRC (tho it has been awhile, see below) it's pretty tolerant of errors 
by default, but there's a strict mode and some debugging possible.  
Apparently, ydec is a similar program for MS.

If you find that pan is indeed posting corrupt files please post that 
here, preferably along with the information for a test post exhibiting 
the problem.  Or if you prefer, file a pan bug, but you'll likely get a 
few others helping to test if you post it here, first.  (Perhaps best 
would be posting here AND filing a bug, with a link from each to the 
other.)



(FWIW, after having not done anything but text for several years I 
recently bought a $50 terabyte block from astraweb, but between some 
crazy work hours lately, being sick a couple days recently, and a 
computer hardware upgrade (dual 42-inch TV/monitors =:^) last week, I 
haven't had time to do more than download their group file yet.  But 
after working today I get effectively two and a half days in a row off 
now, so if I don't get called in on my days off, maybe I'll have some 
time to actually try out pan's binary features again... But I'm not sure 
I'll get around to testing binary posting once I actually get back into 
binary downloading.  We'll see...)

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman