On Sat, 09 May 2009 13:15:19 -0600, Joe Bento wrote:

I use a Mac, and the selection is much more sparse than for Windows.
OS-X can run most any Linux / Unix programl, however. Unison is what
I'm currently using, and I really like its interface. As long as I
remember to embed any binary file within a message, it looks like it
uploads in mime. If I chose to do strictly a binary transfer, it
uploads in yEnc. Panic, the makers of the Unison newsreader say they
are looking into making the digital transfer user selectable.

If you are very brave you could try compiling pan for the Mac!

Is there a definitive standard for binary transfer? Is yEnc a newer /
older protocol? Or might it be a Unix based protocol upon which OS-X is
derived?

I think (but I am not an expert) that the first was uuencoding (Unix to
Unix by text transfer methods) and it became the standard for email, and
so was used for newsgroups as well. However, yEnc is more efficient by a
small amount so became prefered by some for posting the bigger images,
etc, seen in the '.binary' type of newsgroup.

Quite why it was never properly implemented in Thunderbird and so on I
don't know, maybe just the relative lack of newsgroup interest by the new
generation of users of t'Internet.

Regards,
Paul