Re: Fw: RE: [Pan-users] Interesting stuff about yEnc

[Chris Petersen]

This has all gotten a bit off-topif for this list (as has been said 
before, it's a moot point.  yEnc is in Pan, it works, and that's all that 
really matters - if something better comes along than the wonderful coders 
will just add it in, too).

> For the average user (on a dial-up modem and a free news server,
> provided by their ISP), yEnc doesn't offer any better downloads than
> UUEncode. This is because the modem does compression on all data being
> transmitted and UUEncoded stuff compresses better than yEnc.

I think the big thing going on here is that the people benefiting from
yEnc aren't the average users on dial-up modems.  The most popular groups
for yEnc stuff seem to be mp3 and vcd groups (ok, so those are the only
"big binary" groups I really spend a lot of time browsing), both of which
aren't really feasible for dialup users due to the rather large nature of
their content (downloading a 3-disk vcd over a modem would take WAY longer
than any server will keep the articles around for).  most of the posters
in small-binary groups (image groups, etc) still seem to be choosing
uuencode.

Thus (and please say this finishes the off-topic argument about why yEnc 
isn't better than uuencode speed-wise - we all know it's no better for 
dialup people), yEnc has its niche, and it fills it well (or well-enough, 
anyway)...  Pan supports it now (for the most part), and honestly, that's 
all I care about.

just my $.03

-Chris