Article-I.D.: cbdkc1.1212
Posted: Tue Nov 12 20:51:55 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 13-Nov-85 21:21:28 EST
Reply-To: gwe@cbdkc1.UUCP ( George Erhart x4021 CB 3D288 WDS )
Followup-To: net.news,net.news.group
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Columbus
Lines: 31
Xref: watmath net.micro.mac:3413 net.news:4341 net.news.group:4489

[ this line must be converted with a grain of salt! ]

I just noticed a curious thing! A Desk Accessory sampler application
was recently posted to the net on net.sources.mac. The posting contained
full source and a Binhex copy of the final application. The sizes of the 
files are as follows:

    lines words  chars filename
    193    686   4363  Sampler.R  	- source for resource compiler
    443   1706  12687  Sampler.c	- source for Megamax C
    102    105   6303  Sampler.hqx	- BINHEX of final application

The two source files total 17050 characters and the single BINHEX file
totals 6303. I believe that most of you will agree that a binary is
*usually* smaller than all of the source that it takes to produce it.
Just think, if someone had posted the Dungeons Of Doom game as full
source, the game would have taken the better portion of a meg of
bandwidth. Plus, in the case of the DA sampler above, those without
Megamax C can benefit from the posting. 

  I don't think that BINHEXing is the problem, the problem is the
volume of postings is way too high! To solve that problem, I would look
to the use of a moderated group rather than an open forum as we have now.
Personally, I like NSM the way it is now, but if the backbone sites kill
it, I would still like to see a moderated group with perhaps a volume
quota for the # of kbytes per month that could be posted by the moderator.

What do you think?
-- 
George Erhart at AT&T Bell Laboratories Columbus, Ohio 
614-860-4021 {ihnp4,cbosgd}!cbdkc1!gwe