What are inary groups and what is UU, yEnc and MIME encoding?
Binary groups (alt.binaries.pictures) are like all the others except the articles posted to them are not text (readable). Instead they are anything else (programs, pictures, sounds, videos, …). The articles found in binary newsgroups are a lot like E-mails with attachments. The attachment is a file that can be anything. Because Newsgroups were created with only text in mind (like E-mail), users had to get creative in finding ways to post non-text. Text is unique because all the readable characters can be represented with 6 bits (64 combinations), which means the 7th and 8th bit in every byte can be discarded. Non-text requires all 8 bits (256 combinations). So how can you post non-text? You could take every 3 consecutive bytes (24-bits) and translate them into 4 characters (4 6-bit characters = 24-bits too). The resulting file is 33% larger (3 bytes to 4), but can now be represented entirely with 6-bit characters. This 4-for-3 encoding is exactly what UU and MIME/Base64 Encoding do.
Related Questions
- The use of yEnc encoding is popular in a lot of other binaries groups, but not here. Is it OK to use yEnc encoding to post pictures here?
- Does MT-NewsWatcher support the yEnc encoding that is showing up on binary groups a lot now?
- Can I join sections of the same binary file from two different groups or servers?
