yEnc is a new encoding method which offers efficient and
proper transmission for binaries on the Usenet (or by eMail and
other applications).
Other encodings are BASE64, BinHex, UUencode, Quoted Printable,
.....
yEnc is NOT an audio format (as MP3) or a video format (as AVI, MOV,...) or a picture format (as GIF or JPEG).
News and Mail transfer require that a binary attachment is "encoded" before it is sent. And they are "decoded" after they have been received. Normally all this is done by your newsreader (or mail-program). You dont see it. Most dont even know it.
The encoding is necessary because the special methods for the transfer of news & mail (protocols) require it. A message with a binary which is not encoded is corrupted during transmission - or transmission is denied at all.
Transport of messages by News and Mail was restricted to
US-ASCII characters when the protocols were written (20 years
ago). These services have been created to transport only plain
US-text. Special characters (control-characters, symbols,
non-US-characters) were forbidden - and used for special
purposes. But because people wanted to send also binary
attachments by News and Mail some 'tricks' were implemented: The
binary was changed to "allowed US-ASCII-characters"
before transmission (encoding) - and back to a binary after
transmission (decoding). The usual encoding methods are still
respecting these old limitations - and are used everywhere.
Unfortunately there is a price for this 'trick': Encoding makes a
message longer. And not just a little, but 33%-40% longer than
the original attachments. This results in 33%-40% more bytes for
a message - 33%-40% more time for the transmission - 33-40% more
diskspace on the harddisk where there messages are stored (on
news- and mail-servers).
Meanwhile Usenet is able to to transport more than "US-ASCII", it could also transport other characters. Just a few special characters are still forbidden. Unfortunetaly the encodings were never changed. We are all still using BASE64, BinHex, UUencode. We are all wasting every day bandwidth, time, diskspace and money.
yEnc is now a proposed encoding method which is using the fact that news-servers can today transport binaries more efficient. On eMail the situation is far more complicated because there are a lot of older programs and computers involved. But also there would be potential for savings.
You might ask why the name of this thing is "yEnc" -
yEncoding, yDecoding.
Well - I did introduce the name "MyNews" for another
project (in 1997) long before everybody began to use My-Xxxx for
his services or domain names. When I designed the new encoding I
needed any name for it. But as all the 'MyXxxx' names were
already in use (so I could not use MyEnc). I wanted a new name -
which is nearly unique on the Internet. The name
"yEncode" was never used - and the short form would be
yEnc. The file-extension *.ync would also be unique
- so I found a short and good name.
There is no copyright for the yEncoding - it is completely
released into public domain.
May it be helpful the Usenet community!
Jürgen Helbing - 06. March 2001 - Email: yenc@infostar.de