I am putting together a series of FAQs on how to decode uuencoded files from
different newsreaders. I appreciate all comments, opinions, and
questions. If you feel that the material here is hard to understand, or
need more help, please feel free to contact me at hagie@netcom.com. I want
to make these as useful to people as I can, and suggestions are appreciated.
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Tin Newsreader
Ok, You are using Tin, very good, my personal choice. Let's use an
example:
5 + kelbundy.gif [1/1] high quality Joe Hamelin
6 + jenny1f.gif, part 1/3 Repost Robert Heath
7 + jenny1f.gif, part 2/3 Repost Robert Heath
8 + jenny1f.gif, part 3/3 Repost Robert Heath
9 + Erica Eleniak Nude (Erica1.gif 1/1) robert alto
The first thing to do if you want the file jenny1f.gif is to
move the scroll bar down to the first part, and press 't'. The
plus sign in front of it should now become a '1', and the
scroll bar should move down to the next line. Press 't' two more
times, to mark all three parts of the gif. Make sure that you do
this in the right order, if you mark part 2 before part 1 it won't
work. It should now look like this:
5 + kelbundy.gif [1/1] high quality Joe Hamelin
6 1 jenny1f.gif, part 1/3 Repost Robert Heath
7 2 jenny1f.gif, part 2/3 Repost Robert Heath
8 3 jenny1f.gif, part 3/3 Repost Robert Heath
9 + Erica Eleniak Nude (Erica1.gif 1/1) robert alto
Now, type 's', which will bring up this prompt:
Save a)rticle, t)hread, h)ot, p)attern, T)agged articles, q)uit: T
You should see a capital T after the colon, which indicates the
default. This is what you want, so just hit return. It will
now ask you for a filename, like this:
Save filename [something]>
...where something is the previously used filename (I have no
idea what it would be for first time users). It doesn't matter
what you call the file, so put something basic in there (I use
the filename temp.txt), and hit return. It should now give you
the post-processing options, shown below:
Process n)one, s)har, u)ud, l)ist zoo, e)xt zoo, L)ist zip, E)xt zip, q)uit: n
You can see the default is n, but you want uud, so type 'u'.
You well now get a flurry of activity from the program, shown here:
Saving...
Saving...1
Saving...2
Saving...3
-- Saved pattern to temp.txt.01 - temp.txt.03 --
Post processing...
Uudecoding...
Checksum of /u1/hagie/News/temp.txt.01...
15548 63 64469 bytes
Delete saved files that have been post processed? (y/n): y
At least one person doesn't get the checksum and finished file
information part of it, so this may be system dependent.
What it did here is to save the files, than it converted them
to the original picture. Most posts now have a checksum, and
the UUdecoder can tell if they didn't come out quite right
(sometimes). If you see anything else, they will probably
be error messages. Common error messages are NO END LINE,
which usually means that the person who encoded it did it on
an IBM and forgot to get rid of the Carriage Return, and NO BEGIN
LINE, which usually means the encoder forgot a part. If you
make a mistake and don't mark every single part with 't',
you might get these messages too, check to make sure you got
them all. The picture is now saved under it's original name
(in this case, jenny1f.gif), and will be in your News
directory.(~/News) The last thing you need to do is hit 'y'
(or return, since that is the default) and tell it to delete
the temporary files (be sure and do this), and you are all
done, just download the file and your home free.
(
geocities.com/siliconvalley)