"Edward J. Sabol" wrote:
>
> Excerpts from [lists.emacs.rcp]: (07-Oct-99) Re: uuencode syntax? by Stefan Monnier
> > I'd say: kill that ugly uu(en|de)code beast and only support base64.
>
> I agree. I was never a fan of adding uu*coding or base64 as transfer methods
> to rcp.el to begin with, but, if you must, it makes sense to only support
> base64 for the following reasons: (1) mimencode only has one syntax on all
> platforms and (2) base64-(en|dec)coding is part of Emacs. In 20.4, it's
> implemented in C and is much more efficient than executing an external binary
> to do (en|de)coding anyway. For people using older Emacs versions, requiring
> that they install mimencode or use the rcp/scp transfer protocols instead is
> not an undue hardship.
>
> Later,
> Ed
Well, it kind of seems that I'm complaining a lot today, so I might as
well not stop now. :)
Even if I have the latest Emacs, I still have to have mimencode on the
remote system. Mimencode does not appear to be installed by default on
most commercial Unixes. Uuencode is usually there. And even if I
install it myself, I can't get it to work with rcp.el because of the
PATH issue which I described earlier.
Also, uuencode does have one syntax that works on all systems.
Unfortunately it involves a temp file, and Kai is still looking at how
to get that to work.
Scp is a pain because you have to remember what version of ssh each of
your remote hosts is running or else it doesn't work.
I never had this much trouble getting ange-ftp working. Unfortunately,
I am no longer satisfied by the level of security provided by ange-ftp
(because it is based on ftp).
As much as I'm complaining, I really do think that rcp.el is cool,
especially when combined with SSH. It is great to be able to use Emacs
to edit files remotely without having to type passwords in multiple
times or worry about cleartext passwords going over the network. And if
I can get VC working, I'll think that its even cooler. I thank all of
the developers, who are continuing to make this a better product!
David
