path: root/converters/btoa/pkg-descr



This is a port of btoa version 5.2, written by Paul Rutter, Joe
Orost & Stefan Parmark.  btoa converts 4 binary characters to 5
ascii ones, causing a 25% expansion.  (btoa is thus more efficient
than uuencode, which causes a 33% expansion.)  Spaces will not be
used, which should make it safe to send files over e-mail or Usenet
without risking that blanks become tabs.  Each resulting row of
text has a single-byte checksum for error detection.  A diagnosis
file provides a list of errors found this way, which could then be
used to retransmit only the failing lines.

Patch 1 is an unofficial, non-platform-specific patch to version
5.2 of btoa.  It allows for automatic decoding of btoa files if
the program is invoked as "atob" (no -a argument necessary).  It
also outfits the Makefile to do clean and install.

Brent J. Nordquist (nordquist@platinum.com)
Fri Apr  5 23:50:09  1996
This is a port of btoa version 5.2, written by Paul Rutter, Joe
Orost & Stefan Parmark.  btoa converts 4 binary characters to 5
ascii ones, causing a 25% expansion.  (btoa is thus more efficient
than uuencode, which causes a 33% expansion.)  Spaces will not be
used, which should make it safe to send files over e-mail or Usenet
without risking that blanks become tabs.  Each resulting row of
text has a single-byte checksum for error detection.  A diagnosis
file provides a list of errors found this way, which could then be
used to retransmit only the failing lines.

Patch 1 is an unofficial, non-platform-specific patch to version
5.2 of btoa.  It allows for automatic decoding of btoa files if
the program is invoked as "atob" (no -a argument necessary).  It
also outfits the Makefile to do clean and install.

Brent J. Nordquist (nordquist@platinum.com)
Fri Apr  5 23:50:09  1996