Simtel MSDOS 1992 June/SIMTEL_0692.cdr/msdos/filutl/abe.arc/abe.man

Text File | 1989-07-19 | 13KB | 283 lines

ABE(1)                  Reference Manual                  ABE(1)


NAME
     abe - Ascii-Binary Encoder

SYNOPSIS
     abe [ options ] [filename ...]

DESCRIPTION
     The abe program program encodes binary files into a bullet-
     proof form consisting only of printable ASCII characters.
     This new form can be sent through communications channels
     which might get upset at non-printable characters, such as
     USENET news, mail and various text file downloading pro-
     grams.  ABE files should be able to pass through a lot of
     mechanisms and Operating Systems that will kill lesser
     files.

     Abe is a replacement for the uuencode(1) program.   The
     encodings produced by abe are usually smaller, more compres-
     sible, more readable and far more bullet-proof than those
     produced by uuencode.

     All lines in an ABE encoding have a three character line
     number as well as a checksum.  That means that ABE lines may
     be broken apart, scrambled in a random order, and even have
     garbage lines inserted into them without damage.  The
     sort(1) program (or any other text file sort utility) can
     always restore an ABE file to its proper state.

     ABE files can be split into "blocks" when the transport
     mechanism being used is unable to transfer files longer than
     a given length.  These blocks contain checksums, length
     information and `seek address' information for independent
     verification.  With the full dabe ABE decoder, it is possi-
     ble to still decode a file with missing blocks.  Empty
     regions will simply be left undefined in the resulting file.
     If redundant decoding information is added to the blocks,
     they can be presented to the decoder in any order, without
     sorting, and blocks may even be duplicated.  All this was
     designed with the typical problems of USENET binary distri-
     bution in mind.

     Two decoders exist.  One is the `tiny' decoder, tinydabe.c.
     This is a 100 line, public domain, portable C program which
     can be included with ABE files.  Thus any person with a C
     compiler can decode an ABE file, even if they have never
     heard of ABE files before.  It is limited to single file
     encodings of less than 2 megabytes in size.

     The full ABE decoder, dabe, more advanced decoding, with
     more error checking, is possible.  It is suggested that the
     tiny decoder only be used by first time users of the format,
     and those who plan more work should endeavour to use the
     complete decoder.

OPTIONS
     (Note that while option names are displayed here in full,
     only the first letter is actually required.  For +/-
     options, using + turns the option on, and using - turns the
     option off.)

     blocksize=num
          Request that files be split into blocks with an approx-
          imate size of num. Note that files will actually be a
          little bit larger than the requested size, so choose a
          number lower than your hard maximum.  Blocks will be
          put into the single output file unless an output file
          prefix name is provided (p=name).

     prefix=str
          Normally, abe writes encodings to the standard output.
          This option turns on file blocking, and arranges for
          each block to go into a different file.  All file names
          will start with the prefix str and will have a 2-digit
          hexadecimal number at the end.  The default block size
          is 40,000 characters, but that may be set with the
          (b=num) option.

     prefix=|command
          On UNIX systems, if the prefix string begins with an
          or-bar (|), the blocks will actually be piped through a
          shell process using popen(3).  The shell command string
          passed to popen will be that generated by sprintf(3)
          with the prefix string (excluding the or-bar) given as
          the format string, and the file number given as an
          integer argument.  For example, on Unix:
              abe b=25000 file "p=|mail -s 'Part%d' fbaggins"
          would mail all the blocks, with titles, to user fbag-
          gins.  Note that you must quote the whole option, or
          the or-bar will be taken as a pipe character by the
          Unix shell.

     universalname=name
          ABE encodings include both the real name of the encoded
          file and a special universal name that is limited to 12
          characters and should contain no directory characters
          like slash.  The universal name is used when decoding
          on an operating system different from the encoder's
          system.  Universal names are also used when multiple
          files are placed in the same encoding.  If you don't
          provide a universal name, one will be formed from the
          real file name.  You can only provide your own univer-
          sal name when encoding a single file.  If no filename
          is given, a universal name of "stdin" is used.
     decoder=pathname
          Insert the source to the tiny ABE decoder "tinydabe.c"
          from the file in pathname.

     sample=size
          abe and do either a single pass or double pass over its
          input, except when the input is the standard input, in
          which case only a single pass is possible.  abe likes
          to do two passes so that it can get frequency tables
          for the bytes in the input file.  The more accurate the
          frequency tables, the smaller the encoding.  If two
          passes are not possible, or you request one-pass opera-
          tion with this option, abe reads in a buffer of size
          size and builds the frequency table from that.  The
          default (for stdin) is 10,000 bytes.  You can set it as
          high as the limit for dynamic memory allocation on your
          system.

     linenumber=num
          Normally ABE encodings start at line one.  If you wish
          to concatenate two encodings, you can start your second
          encoding at a higher line number with this option.  You
          give the number in decimal, although it will be output
          in ABE's special format of 3 printable characters.
          Encodings that don't start at line 1 will be rejected
          by the tiny dabe decoder.

     +redundant
          In a blocked encoding, this option asks that redundant
          information be added to each block, so that the file
          may be decoded without sorting by the advanced ABE
          decoder, even if blocks are missing, duplicated or in
          the wrong order.

     +decoder
          Request that the source for the tiny ABE decoder be
          inserted into your ABE encoding.  The source is to be
          taken from the standard location defined by your system
          administrator.

     +ebcdic
          Use the ABE2 encoding, which is designed to pass
          through EBCDIC machines without trouble.  The ABE2
          encoding does not make use of the following characters:
          "![\]^`{|}~" -- they have all been reported to some-
          times not survive multiple ASCII<-->EBCDIC transla-
          tions.  It maps to 4 sets of 64 characters, and pro-
          duces encodings that are slightly larger.

     +uuencode
          Use the UUENCODE encoding scheme.  These scheme is
          totally unlike ABE schemes, but is quite popular and
          sometimes a bit smaller on compressed binary files.
          UUENCODE lines are formed from the 64 characters from
          space to underbar, with a simple mapping that maps 4
          printable characters to 3 binary bytes.  Files produced
          with +uuencode can often be decoded by uudecode(1)
          decoders after the application of sort and a simple
          sed(1) script to remove the first four bytes of each
          line.  If you use the -number option, the sed script is
          not even necessary   The UUENCODE format is more prone
          to errors and usually is more bulky than either ABE
          format.

     -numbers
          Remove line numbers and line checksums from most of the
          encoding.  The first few lines of every block will
          still have line numbers, but the bulk of the encoding
          will not.  This saves 4 bytes per line, reducing the
          size of encodings by about 6%.   Such encodings can't
          be decoded by tinydabe decoders, nor can they be
          sorted.  While they are more prone to potential errors,
          most such errors occur between blocks, so removing the
          line numbers is usually safe.  When used with +uuen-
          code, this option allows encodings that can be decoded
          both with dabe(1) and uudecode(1).

OPERATION
     Abe can take input in 3 ways.  The first is the standard
     input, which allows abe to be used at the end of a pipe.  If
     the standard input is used, abe works in one-pass mode, and
     only reads the first part of the file to figure out charac-
     ter mappings.

     Abe may also be given a single filename, in which case that
     file will be encoded.  An alternate output name can be pro-
     vided with the "universalname=" option.

     Abe can also be given multiple files.  The output will be
     roughly equivalent to the concatenation of single-file ABE
     encodings, except the line numbers will continue properly in
     sequence.  This produces a sort of multi-file archive,
     although abe is not intended to be used as an archiver.   In
     fact, it is better to use abe on the output of general non-
     compressing archivers like tar(1) or cpio(1).  It can also
     be used on compressed archiver output, but generally it's
     better to let the transport mechanism (usually USENET links)
     worry about doing the compressing.

ENCODING FORMAT
     In the standard ABE1 encoding, 256 bytes are broken up into
     3 sets, with 86, 86 and 84 bytes, respectively.  The most
     common 86 bytes in the file go into set 0, and so on.  86 of
     the printable ASCII characters are used to encode the
     members of each set.  Special printable escape characters
     switch from set to set.

     In an ABE encoding, printable characters always map to them-
     selves, if possible.  This means that printable character
     strings found in binary files are still readable in an ABE
     encoding.  You can often look at a raw ABE file and see what
     it is, which is quite useful.  In addition, the byte 0 maps
     to the ASCII digit "0," and several other similar useful
     mappings are made.

     ABE files also have header information that defines informa-
     tion about the encoded files, block headings, sizes and
     checksums.  For full details on the encoding format, see the
     special file on that in the ABE kit.

     The ABE2 encoding splits the 256 bytes into 4 sets of 64
     bytes each.  It avoids certain dangerous characters.  Other-
     wise it is similar to ABE1.  ABE2 encodings are only
     slightly larger, and slightly less readable than ABE1 encod-
     ings

COMPRESSION
     ABE files usually always use the same string of printable
     characters to represent a given string of printable bytes.
     (This is not true for uuencodings.)  This is good for LZW
     compressors.

     ABE encodings are very good on text files.  In general,
     except for the overhead of headers, checksums and line
     numbers, text files encode to the same size in an ABE file.
     Sadly, ABE does its worst job on compressed files.  This
     "worst job" is usually about the same as the job done by
     uuencode, plus the overhead of headers, checksums and line
     numbers.  In general, files posted to USENET should not be
     pre-compressed, as compression should be left to the tran-
     sportation mechanisms.  (Most USENET links batch and
     compress what they transmit.)

BLOCKING
     The ABE blocking system is ideal for sending binaries over
     USENET and other limited channels.  Normally, ABE output is
     a continuous stream sent to the standard output.

AUTHOR
     The ABE system was written by Brad Templeton, who is
     [e-mail].  (Mail regarding abe should go to
     [e-mail].) The tiny ABE decoder is released to the
     public domain.  All other files are Copyright 1989 by Brad
     Templeton.  A licence for unlimited non-commercial use of
     these encoders is granted.  See the source code in the ABE
     kit for full details on the licence.

     No fee is requested or required for the use of these pro-
     grams.  If you feel the need to show appreciation, You might
     order copies of the REC.HUMOR.FUNNY Computer Network Humour
     Annual(s) (a USENET jokebook) for 9.95 USD+S/H.  Mail to
     [e-mail] or call 519/884-7473.  There is no
     requirement to buy the jokebook in order to use these pro-
     grams.

FILES
     tinydabe.c

SEE ALSO
     dabe(1), uuencode(1), ABE file format (abeformat)

VERSION
     Version 1.0


                       Manual formatted 1989/07/18