thought...

 BBS: Inland Empire Archive
Date: 07-05-92 (10:52)             Number: 2
From: JAMES VAHN                   Refer#: 2050
  To: JOHN GALLAS                   Recvd: NO  
Subj: thought...                     Conf: (2) Quik_Bas

JG>  I was thinking about how that locode program can take any 3 chars, and
JG>  make them into 4 postable chars..  Would it be possible to take 4
JG>  postable chars, and make them into 3 <0-255> chars, and then process
JG>  that through datamkr?  Cause then the file wouldn't be as big as normal,
JG>  and you'd have datamkr's checksum thingy, and it'd be self-uncompressing
JG>  from QB.  Would it work?

Yes.  That's what (I hope) is being worked on.  There has been enough
info exchanged to explain this, but if you missed the brunt of it I'll
toss some code off the top of my head..  Complete with bugs!  Just the
encoding stuff though, the rest is up to you.

open "xxx.com" for binary as #1
open "xxx.uue" for output as #2

inst$=space$(3)                 ' get three bytes at a time (bug!).
cnt = 0                         ' setup a line counter.

do
  get #1,,inst$

  byte1 = mid$(inst$,1,1)       ' Split into 3 bytes..
  byte2 = mid$(inst$,2,1)       '    that's the reason for the ^^(bug)
  byte3 = mid$(inst$,3,1)       '

   LongByte& = (byte1 * 2^16) + (byte2 *2^8) + byte3
    uue1% = LongByte& / 2^18                      '
    uue2% = (LongByte& - uue1%) / 2^12            ' break into 4 parts
    uue3% = (LongByte& - uue1% - uue2%) / 2^6     '
    uue4% = LongByte& - uue1% - uue2% - uue3%     '

 print #2, chr$(uue1# +32);  ' print all four, including
 print #2, chr$(uue2# +32);  ' the (bug).
 print #2, chr$(uue3# +32);
 print #2, chr$(uue4# +32);

cnt = cnt + 4
if cnt = 68 then print #2,: cnt = 0

loop until loc(1) >= lof(1)    ' inst$ being 3 bytes, QB will often
                               ' read past the end of the file.
                               ' Same (bug).

close
end

I suppose it could write out the file length for the decoder to strip
the (bug) from, eh?


 * SLMR 2.1a *