Internet Draft T. Mityok Public Access Publications Expires February, 2 1997 July 25, 1996 Adopt MacBinary II Mac File Encoding for FTP Transfers This document is an Internet-Draft. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet- Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress.'' To learn the current status of any Internet-Draft, please check the "1id-abstracts.txt'' listing contained in the Internet- Drafts Shadow Directories on ftp.is.co.za (Africa), nic.nordu.net (Europe), munnari.oz.au (Pacific Rim), ds.internic.net (US East Coast), or ftp.isi.edu (US West Coast). 1. Abstract This draft is a targeted at the Macintosh Internet users to adopt the MacBinary II form of Macintosh file encoding for use on FTP sites as an alternative to BinHexing Macintosh files. The current standard file encoding method for Macintosh files placed on Internet FTP sites is BinHexing. The process converts binary data into a coded-text based format. While very popular and widely used this process increases the files size dramatically. For example a self-extracting archive that is 389,089 byte in size will swell to 535,944 bytes after being BinHexed. The resulting file is nearly 30% larger than its original version. This process is completely wasteful and totally unnecessary for FTP transfers. 2. Purpose of this draft The increases in BinHex file sizes translates into larger hard disk requirements, increased load placed on FTP servers and longer download times. Users on PPP or SLIP accounts can use modem-based data compression to increase bandwidth, but with multi-meg downloads the benefits are negligible. I suggest the Macintosh community on the Internet adopt the MacBinary II form of file encoding as the standard format for FTP file transfers. The MacBinary II format combines the two parts of a Macintosh file, the resource and the data fork, into one data file. An additional 128 bytes are added as a data file header in the process. The addition of 128 bytes is the only increase in the files overall size. Mityok [Page 1] Adopt MacBinary II Mac File Encoding for FTP Transfers draft-macbin2.txt The resulting file can be transferred to non-Macintosh computer systems without the loss of Mac-header or resource fork information. MacBinary is not a transfer protocol like Xmodem, Kermit, or Zmodem. Instead, it is used in conjunction with a transfer protocol, however it is independent of that protocol. A file that is 389,89 bytes in size is only 389,244 bytes after being MacBinarized. The total increase of file size is completely unnoticed by the user. The majority of currently available Macintosh Internet software is capable of either recognizing or decoding a MacBinary file including Netscape, Internet Explorer, Ircle v2.5 and Fetch v3.0. A non-Internet program capable of handling a MacBinary file is StuffIt Expander from Aladdin Systems. Most notably in the list is Fetch for FTP file transfers. Fetch comes pre-configured to decode MacBinary files as they are downloaded from FTP sites. Fetch can also upload a standard Macintosh file and MacBinarize it while uploading. This eliminates a secondary process of encoding before uploading as with BinHexing. Since so many existing Internet programs can handle this type of file it would seem logical to take advantage of the hard disk and bandwidth savings of using MacBinary II file encoding for Macintosh files for FTP transfers. 3. Author's Address Tim Mityok Public Access Publications 450 S. Valencia #A7 Mesa, AZ 85202 Fax: 602-964-2531 EMail: wardawg@public-access.org Mityok [Page 2]