Help! Can Thoth decode an already downloaded yEnc file?
ghfo...@comcast.net
I ran across some concert recordings by Natalie Merchant, one of my
favorite artists, in a binary group, and managed to download all of
them, several thousand parts in all. BUT they are in yEnc format, and
they create errors when I try to decode them with yEnc TZ or Rosetta. I
also failed in trying to un-yEnc them on a PC. HOWEVER, using Thoth for
OS X I managed to find a server that still had a small part of the set
and downloaded a couple of the files, and they decoded perfectly via
Thoth's built-in yEnc decoding routines.
So, can I take the raw yEnc files I downloaded using MT Newswatcher 3.1
under OS 9.2.2 and somehow persuade Thoth/OS X to decode them? The
Import command is grayed out, and Open simply created a spinning
beachball that eventually I had to force quit out of.
Failing that, any suggestions as to how I can get these decoded? Should
I try posting them to something like a binaries test group, and see if I
can redownload them? If I do this, how should these already yEnc-encoded
files be posted?
Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
George Fowler
sbt
<ghfo...@comcast.net> wrote:
The files you downloaded with MT-NW 3.1 are corrupt. Pre-3.2 versions
do a lot of byte-conversion (as does the original NewsWatcher and
YA-NW) when you download files. For example, any byte with a value of 9
is treated as a Tab character and converted into a sequence of bytes
each with a value of 32 (there are lots of other bytes that are just
discarded). You need to find the originals and redownload them with a
better-behaved newsreader version.
If Rosetta won't decode them, Thoth won't either. They use
(essentially) the same code as both are written by Brian Clark and kept
pretty much in sync.
--
Spenser
Hambleton
(the author of Rosetta). He told me that Rosetta can decode yEnc files
after the fact, but that it would only work if they were downloaded
with Thoth (also his product). He says that most older newsreaders do
something to the content when it is downloaded which "corrupts" the
file. I tried some tests with yEnc files downloaded with Thoth, and
found that in general Rosetta wouldn't work. Here's what I found:
-A multi-segment file (ie: made up of say 20 parts numbered 1/20, 2/20,
..., 20/20) would not decode properly even if downloaded with Thoth.
-A file consisting of a number of separate one part files (ie: like a
bunch of small .jpg images all saved together as a large file) will
only decode the first .jpg properly. The other .jpgs will show up, but
they are corrupt. Even using GraphicConverter which will usually open
a corrupt image will not work.
-If I manually open the large file and then go through it and save each
individual segment or .jpg with a separate name, Rosetta will not
decode these either except for the first one, so there's obviously
something happening to the overall file when it is downloaded (with
Thoth).
I've had no luck with yEnc TZ either.
As far as "recycling" your downloads through Thoth, I believe the Open
menu item is for opening a newsgroup list and not a binary file. The
import command is also greyed out for me, but it is probably there to
import a newsgroup list from another newsreader.
I don't know how you would deal with uploading your yEnc file in order
to download it again. You could try a test with one part of your file
and see what happens without any encoding on the upload to keep the
format as yEnc. If you upload the file and say UUEncode it, then I
think Thoth will UUDecode the file but you'll end up with a yEnc file
again. Also, based on my experience, and regardless of what Brian
says, there's the possibility that the data is actually corrupt anyway,
and this is all a waste of time...
If you have registered copies of Thoth and Rosetta, I suggest you
e-mail Brian Clark bac...@kagi.com and let him know of your problem.
Maybe if he hears the same complaint from another user, he will look at
the problem more closely.
Here's his reply to my questions:
>If I download ("save as" and not decode as I download) a single yEnc
>encoded file of say 10 parts such as a .mpg or mp3, when I use
>Rosetta1.4.7 to decode the file, the resulting file is not valid.
What program are you using to download? Ads noted in the Rosetta
documentation, most older newsreaders can not save yEnc posts without
corrupting them. What's left after the corruption may or may not be
usable, it depends on what was in the file originally and what effect
corruption has on the type of file.
I'm not aware of any problem with Rosetta and multiple part yEnc posts.
>If I have a large yEnc file saved as plain text made up of a bunch of
>.rar segments (ie: segments 1 to 20 with each segment being 10 parts),
>Rosetta will "decode" the parts, but into the individual parts (20 X 10
>= 200) rather than joining the segments and giving me the 20 segments.
I'm not sure what you're doing here. The usual way to use Rosetta is to
have one temp file with the attachment data per final file. So if this
was a multi-part post with 10 parts, all 10 parts should be saved (in
the correct order) to a single file. Rosetta will the decode this if
you drop the file on it.
If you have the 10 parts as individual files, you have to use the Join
command, select the 10 files, get them in the correct order, and check
the "decode" checkbox so that after joining the 10 files the result is
also decoded.
If you have 200 files that make up 20 posts of 10 parts each, you can't
just drop all the files on Rosetta and have everything automatically
joined and decoded.
In article <ghfowler-1FD4B4...@av.teranews.com>,
<ghfo...@comcast.net> wrote:
George Fowler
sbt <dogb...@chaseabone.com.invalid> wrote:
> The files you downloaded with MT-NW 3.1 are corrupt. Pre-3.2 versions
> do a lot of byte-conversion (as does the original NewsWatcher and
> YA-NW) when you download files. For example, any byte with a value of 9
> is treated as a Tab character and converted into a sequence of bytes
> each with a value of 32 (there are lots of other bytes that are just
> discarded). You need to find the originals and redownload them with a
> better-behaved newsreader version.
Thanks to both the respondants to my message. This sounds pretty
definitive, and would explain why the two files I managed to download
with Thoth/OS X worked fine. <Sigh> I'm out of news servers! (I
subscribe to newsguy and teranews, mainly in order to collect music
binaries of this type.) Maybe I can get the original poster to repost
for me, although it is a hell of a lot of bandwidth for that, since
these are Shorten files.
Thanks!
George Fowler