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Usenet Encoding: yEnc

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the all-your-base64-are-belong-to-us dept.

Motor writes "Anyone remotely interested in usenet binary newsgroups must have noticed the spread of yEnc. yEnc is an encoding scheme for usenet binaries which avoids the enormous (30-40%) bloat associated with the schemes currently in use - which all have to produce 7-bit data to stop ancient newsservers from choking. A good thing, surely? Well, not according to some people. The guy has some good points about yEnc and standards, but I can't help thinking that "standards" people have endlessly discussed better encoding schemes, and nothing has come out of it. yEnc may not be perfect, but it works and it's here - hence the rapid adoption. What do you think?"

2 of 417 comments (clear)

  1. Two Problems: by NeuroManson · · Score: 5, Interesting

    One: yENC, when it was unveiled, did not really allow most conventional newsreaders any opportunity to adapt, til after the fact. This is akin to perhaps releasing zip files long before any archival software was actually available to open them... So do most of the folks using usenet for binaries get the opportunity to at least *choose* the way they do their downloads? Nope, they also are forced to adapt, or lose out...

    Two: Loss in transmission... I've been downloading yENC attachments for the last month, and out of them, found over 50% loss/corruption in posting... Not due to retention/propagation either... Just files missing large chunks... Now this *could* be due to some problems on the senders' end, but it seems just a little *too* coincidental that almost all of the losses have occured with yENC uploads...

    --
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  2. Jeremy's right, but it's too late now. by Charles+Kerr · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I'm one of the authors of the Pan newsreader and agree with Jeremy's analysis of yEnc. yEnc repeats many of uu's mistakes, so news clients have to search text/plain messages for =ybegin and =yend blocks instead of looking in the headers.

    But yEnc's bandwidth savings are real, which is a huge win for alt.binaries users. yEnc has been the most-requested feature for Pan over the last month. (0.11.2.90 supports it.) IMO yEnc is the format to use for multiparts right now.

    Hopefully yEnc will motivate others to come up with a mime-friendly alternative encoding for Usenet. yEnc Considered Harmful is another yEnc opposition page that suggests mzip compression, but I haven't seen any public discussion of it yet.

    If/when such a replacment comes along, Pan will support it too and add an are-you-sure dialog for yEnc postings.