yEnc - Efficient encoding for Usenet and eMail

The next round in standardization of Binary Usenet messages has been started.
[BinFor] in the keyword for "Binary Format" and you might hear more about it.
Combined with gZip-8bit is could be a powerful standard format.
Perhaps it would be realized as 'zEnc' - the final encoding and posting method
(before Binary Usenet splits to a seperate news-network).

30. March 2003:

Newsflash: Some neticens began to post yEncoded messages without the mandatory keyword: yEnc
in the subject line. Some tools are permitting to post without the quotes around the filename.
Both tendencies are not compliant to the yEnc spec. Programmers are honestly to fulfill the spec.

Seventeen moths after its official announcement yEnc is now the the
standard encoding for large binaries on Usenet.
It also used in many binary picture groups.

Meanwhile all major newsreaders have been extended to yEnc support.
Those who were not updated yet are no longer supported by their authors
or not intended for use on the Binary Usenet.

The common Web-Browsers with newsgroup access have not been updated.
So these programs are no longer usable for Binary Usenet.
But fortunately there are enough good freeware newsreaders.
And there is also VuePrint - a picture and binary broswer which decodes and displays yEncoded messages.

The author is a programmer - not a webdesigner or documentation specialist !

What is yEnc ?
User questions, FAQ
Programs (tools) and sites which support yEnc
Developers (Newsgroup,Mailing list,MIME,Documents, samples,sourcecode)
General information (Motivation,History,MIME,Credits)
.
Note to the "Forte newAgent 1.91" with yEnc suppport (22.March.2002)
Broken tools for yEnc (please dont use these applications)

Alternative usage of yEnc (others than for Usenet):

As predicted I've meanwhile got notice that some people did add yEnc as a file-transfer option to their telnet client/sever apps. (Thanks Norman K.)

Ed Hamrick did implement yEnc into his picture viewer program 'VuePrint'. This permits to 'view' the picture within a yEncoded message by decoding it. (It plays also MPG or MOV or ZIP or ... this way).

Changes

New: 28.03.2003

Many decoders for all platforms added: MsDos, Amiga, PHP, OS2, Java, VMS, ...
Mailing list reference removed.
Added to "Developers" section: Frequent programming problem & other programming problems

New: 10.06.2002

yProxy; Mac-Freeware-Decoder; Tools splitted by OS; own MSOE-pages; History (english) as HTM, not RTF; MS-Link added; Link to absmc fixed; "Might"-->"May"; Tool-list expanded;

Old: 23.Mar.2002 - Broken tools; Forte Agent 1.91 supports yEnc
Old: 06.Mar.2002 - Startpage has been splitted; User-Section & FAQ added; English history added; New tools; Draft version 1.3
Old: 25.Feb.2002 - Forte, Newsguy, new tools.

Related projects

For those who are interested in other projects from me:

MyNews - The freeware + shareware All-In-One newsreader newsserver autoposter: http://www.winews.net
..... MyNews includes also the reference encoder and decoder for yEnc in the freeware version.
StattBlatt München - A demonstration of a News-2-Web Gateway based on MyNews: http://www.statt-blatt.de
...

There is no copyright for the yEncoding - it is completely released into public domain.
May it be helpful the Usenet community!

Jürgen Helbing - 10. June 2002 - Email: yenc@infostar.de