From: ian@cs.mcgill.ca (Ian Frederic STEWART)
Date: Sun Jan 23 11:20:20 CST 1994

Here's an FAQ that I wrote up, I don't pretend that it is either
COMPLETE or necessarily CORRECT.  It will give you a general idea,
though.

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QUESTIONS ANSWERED:

        WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A NORMAL PICTURE AND AN ANIMATION?
        WHY CAN'T I SIMPLY POST ANIMATIONS DIRECTLY ON THE USENET?
        WHAT IS uuencodeING?
        WHAT IS uudecodeING?
        HOW DO I GET AN ANIMATION OFF THE USENET?
        HOW DO I PUT AN ANIMATION ON THE USENET?
        HOW DO I DISPLAY ANIMATIONS?

--------WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A NORMAL PICTURE AND AN ANIMATION?
        Animations have special codes hidden in them, called escape codes.
        These codes tell your vt100 terminal to move the cursor up one
        line, left three, write in reverse, etc.  So, for example, if
        "<ESC>[L" meant go left (<ESC> being one character, #27, of
        course) then "A<ESC>[LB<ESC>[LC<ESC>[LD<ESC>[LE<ESC>[LF" will
        display A, then overwrite it with B, then overwrite it with C,
        etc.  Now, if you put some more interesting combinations in, you
        can create great vt100 animations such as the copy of the classic
        movie "Bambi meets Godzilla", and quality works like "Globe.vt",
        by Jef Poskanzer.

--------WHY CAN'T I SIMPLY POST ANIMATIONS DIRECTLY ON THE USENET?
        THIS is an important question (very good, Ian.  You've been
        paying attention.)  Don't bet your life on this but I'm pretty
        sure it is accurate.  When you post a letter, newsreaders
        automatically filter out the Escape characters.  So when you
        download the animation, it doesn't say "<ESC>[L" but "^[L" or
        something, which means ZIPPO (Blip!) to a vt100 terminal.
        THAT IS WHY YOU MUST _ALWAYS_ (no, I mean always) UUENCODE animations
        before posting them (notice I said animations.  Normal pictures,
        of course, need no special attention besides artistic talent. :)
        If you don't uuencode your animation, people cannot view the
        animation, making it a BIG waste of a ton of people's money.(It
        is possible to rebuild, but I can't imagine many people will
        want to go through the trouble)

--------WHAT IS UUENCODEing?
        uuencode is a program which takes files and encodes them in such
        a way that I have no idea, but the important thing is that there
        are only printable characters, I believe.  So therefore, they
        can be sent on the USENET, without the Escape characters being
        removed.
        A uuencoded file looks SOMETHING like this:

        begin 664 filename.vt100
        MSDJKFXCNVNXLL!@#)(*S)F(SDF*CVXHVKS*)XUCV)X*(CV*UX)*FDUVD)*VXC
        M*OVD()*FV)S*VU)X*VUX)C*VUX)*VUX)*VSUDV*)XCUVX)CV*XCV*)XCV*)XC
        .
        .
        end

        To find out more about "uuencode", consult your local friendly
        man pages.  you probably won't find anything.

        Type uuencode <filetoencode> <newname>

--------WHAT IS UUDECODEing?
        Obviously, the opposite of UUENCODING.  Sheesh.  Take a file,
        HELPIMENCODED, and say uudecode HELPIMENCODED.  The original
        file will show up in your directory.  (The filename will be
        the name after "begin ###" at the start of the HELPIMENCODED
        file.  For example, the example from the previous question will
        create a file name filename.vt100.)  This, if everything worked
        properly, should be the same as the original animation the
        poster encoded.

--------HOW DO I GET AN ANIMATION OFF THE USENET?
        1) Well, first, you must save it in a file.  Try the magic keys "h"
        and "?" to try to get help.  Say you save it to the file BLOOP.
        2) When you are finished reading the articles and you exit your
        newsreader, find the directory that has the file BLOOP in it
        (Probably ~/News)  Use any editor, and remove everything before
        the "begin 664 filename.vt100" and everything after the "end" at
        the end.  Save.  This is not really necessary, unless the
        animation was in two parts, simply cut in two and posted one
        after the other.  In this case, your saved file will have the
        header "Subject. ...." in the middle of the encoding.  Remove
        these lines also, including blank lines.
        3) You now have a uuencoded animation.  uudecode it.

--------HOW DO I PUT AN ANIMATION ON THE USENET?
        1) Well, first, you must create an animation.  GOOD LUCK!
           The only program I've seen for this is TheDraw.  Use
           "archie -s thedraw" and you may get lucky.
        2) uuencode the animation.
        3) When in the newsreader and you say post, tell it to include
        the UUENCODED file in your post.

--------HOW DO I DISPLAY ANIMATIONS?
        This is the easiest part.  If your uudecoded file is called
        "GRIBBLE" then simply say "cat GRIBBLE" or perhaps "type
        GRIBBLE".  It may flash on your screen really quickly, but
        I don't know how to fix that.
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|Ian.Stewart,.U1.Rep.CSUS..ian@cs.mcgill.ca.Tel:737-0680......-####-?.d.@##
|NO,.I'm.NOT.doing.anything.productive.today...Gotta.problem?.|    |..!.|
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