MCVERT(LOCAL)
MCVERT(LOCAL)
10Nov93
NAME
mcvert - MacBinary <=> BinHex 4.0 and more file conversion utility
SYNOPSIS
mcvert { [option] ... name ... } ...
DESCRIPTION
The mcvert program translates files between MacBinary format and
other
formats often used in exchanging Macintosh files. See FILE FORMATS
below for a description of the file formats supported.
PARAMETERS
The defaults for the parameters are -xDqv: convert BinHex 4.0 files
(x) to MacBinary files (D), bypass automatic unpacking of PIT files
(q), and provide a verbose level of output (v).
OPTIONS
All the options, other than FORMAT OPTIONS described below, are
listed
here. From each set, one and only one alternative is active for any
one file.
U | D
When option -U, as in Upload, is selected, the conversion is
from
MacBinary to something else. Conversely, option -D, as in
Download, selects conversion from something to MacBinary.
p | q
If a BinHex 4.0 to MacBinary conversion is taking place and
option -p, as in Pit, is selected, any file of type "PIT " will
be unpacked into its constituent parts. This option does not
recursively unpack "PIT " files packed in "PIT " files. If a
MacBinary to BinHex 4.0 conversion is taking place, this option
is currently ignored. Conversely, option -q, as in Quiescent,
does no such unpacking.
t Macintosh and UNIX differ in the end-of-line character they use.
Option -t, as in Translate, enables end-of-line character
translation for the data. Translation is off by default, but it
is enabled automatically when processing -u (Usual Text) files.
Option -t is useful when processing both data and resource files
at the same time (option -b) to enable end-of-line character
translation for the data.
S | s | v | V | VV
Normally, mcvert prints converting messages and other
information
about the files it is processing to stderr. Option -S, as in
SILENT, disables all such reporting. Option -s, as in Silent,
disables all but the "Converting ..." messages. Option -v, as
in
Verbose, emits generally useful information. Option -V, as in
VERBOSE, displays some additional debugging information. Option
-VV, as in VERY VERBOSE, displays detailed debugging information
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as well.
H Option -H, as in Heuristic, disables the skip-legal-but-suspect-
lines heuristic used when processing BinHex 4.0 formatted input
files. See BUGS below for details on the heuristic.
I Option -I, as in Information only, does not write output files,
but does indicate which output files would normally be written.
All other operations are performed, including verifying file
formats and calculated CRC values. The -I option basically
provides a non-destructive verification of the files and their
processing. It is also a soothing balm for the somewhat
paranoid, since it reports what files would be changed, without
actually changing them.
P Option -P, as in Pipe output to stdout, writes the resulting
output file(s) to stdout, rather than to the file system with
the
appropriate extension. The default is to use the file system.
FILE FORMATS
Some useful formats in which Macintosh files are represented on non-
Macs are:
MacBinary:
An eight bit wide representation of the data and resource forks
of a Mac file and of relevant Finder information, MacBinary
files
are recognized as "special" by several Macintosh terminal
emulators. These emulators, using kermit or xmodem or other
file
transfer protocols, can separate the incoming file into forks
and
appropriately modify the Desktop to display icons, types,
creation dates, and the like.
BinHex 4.0:
A seven bit wide representation of a Mac file with CRC error
checking, BinHex 4.0 files are designed for communication of Mac
files over long distance, possibly noisy, seven bit wide paths.
PackIt:
PackIt files are actually representations of collections of Mac
files, possibly Huffman compressed. Packing many small related
files together before a MacBinary transfer or a translation to
BinHex 4.0 is common practice.
Text:
A Macintosh ends each line of a plain text file with a carriage
return character (^M), rather than the newline character (^J)
that some systems require (for example, UNIX). Moreover, a
MacBinary file has prepended Finder information that non-
Macintoshes usually don't expect.
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Data, Rsrc:
A Data or Rsrc file is the exact copy of the data or resource
fork of a Macintosh file.
FORMAT OPTIONS
Exactly one of the following selections may be specified for an input
name:
x BinHex 4.0 [.hqx] - files in the MacBinary format are translated
to BinHex 4.0 files, or vice versa. The name argument is the
name of a file to be converted. If the conversion is from
BinHex
4.0 to MacBinary, several files may comprise the BinHex 4.0
representation of the Mac file. Rather than manually
concatenate
the files and manually delete mail headers and other extraneous
garbage, one may specify the names of the files in order and
mcvert will do the concatenating and deleting. Conversely, in
converting a MacBinary file to BinHex 4.0 format for mailing
over
long distances, one may be restricted to mail messages of no
greater that some fixed length. In this case, mcvert can
automatically divide the BinHex 4.0 file into pieces and label
each piece appropriately. For details on automatically
segmenting files, see the description of the MAC_LINE_LIMIT
environment variable below.
u | h
Text [.text] - files in the MacBinary format with nonempty data
forks and empty resource forks are made from ordinary data
files,
or vice versa. Option -u, for Usual Text, performs translation.
Option -h, for Host Text, performs no translation. When
translating, UNIX newline characters are interchanged with
Macintosh carriage return characters.
d Data [.data] - files in the MacBinary format with nonempty data
forks and empty resource forks are made from ordinary data
files,
or vice versa. If the data is really text, you should use -u or
-h so that the file type and creator get set correctly.
r Resource [.rsrc] - files in the MacBinary format with empty data
forks and nonempty resource forks are made from ordinary data
files, or vice versa.
b Both [.data .rsrc] - files in the MacBinary format with nonempty
data forks and and nonempty resource forks are made from
ordinary
data files, or vice versa. For option -b processing, a single
base file name is provided, and the ".data" and ".rsrc"
extensions are supplied by mcvert.
FILE NAMES AND EXTENSIONS
mcvert uses certain file extensions when reading and writing files.
These extensions are indicated in the "FORMAT OPTIONS" section above.
For example, the appropriate extension for a BinHex 4.0 file is
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".hqx".
For input files, mcvert first tries to open the file using the
specified name. If that fails, mcvert appends the appropriate suffix
(if not already present) and tries again. Recall that for option -b
(Both) processing, a single base file name must be provided, since
the
".data" and ".rsrc" extensions are appended automatically by mcvert.
For example, "mcvert foo" will try to open "foo", and failing that,
try to open "foo.hqx" for input; while "mcvert -b foo" will open only
"foo.data" and "foo.rsrc" for input.
For output files, mcvert always uses the specified base file name and
appropriate extension. For MacBinary and BinHex 4.0 input files, the
base file name is specified within the input file, while for plain
files, the file name specified on the command line is used. The
appropriate extension is based on the conversion, or on the MAC_EXT
environment variable for MacBinary output files. For example, if
there is text file named foo.text (but no file named foo), "mcvert -u
foo" will use foo.text as input, and generate a file called
"foo.bin",
while "mcvert -u foo.text" will use foo.text as input, and generate a
file called "foo.text.bin".
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES AND DEFAULTS
There are five environment variables one may use to customize the
behavior of mcvert slightly.
MAC_FILETYPE
The file type of a MacBinary file converted from non BinHex 4.0
inputs is set to this four-character sequence. For example, one
might set this variable to "PICT" when converting files created
by ppmtopict(1). The default is "TEXT" for Text or Host inputs,
and "????" otherwise. BinHex 4.0 inputs specify the file type
to
use internally.
MAC_EDITOR
The creator type (author) of MacBinary files is set to this
four-character sequence. The default is "MACA" (the creator
type
of MacWrite) for Text inputs, and "????" otherwise. BinHex 4.0
inputs specify the creator type to use internally.
MAC_DLOAD_DIR
The MacBinary files created when option -D is selected are
placed
in this directory. The default is ".", the current working
directory.
MAC_EXT
The MacBinary files created when option -D is selected are named
according to the file name field stored in the file header, with
the name extended by this suffix. The default is ".bin".
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MAC_LINE_LIMIT
The BinHex 4.0 files created when option -U is selected may be
no
longer than this many lines long. Files that would otherwise
exceed this line limit are broken up into several files with
numbers embedded into their file names to show their order.
Each
such file has "Start of part x" and "End of part x" messages
included where appropriate.
BUGS
mcvert silently discards input lines which are not completely valid.
Therefore, error indications for illegally formatted files are likely
to be somewhat obtuse, often with just a CRC mismatch message.
In order to handle files (such as segmented comp.binaries.mac files)
which have extraneous but valid BinHex 4.0 lines (such as "---"),
mcvert uses the following heuristic to discard suspect but legal
lines
in BinHex 4.0 formatted input files. When a new file is opened, or
when invalid lines are found, the search for good data begins. While
searching for good data, if a line is too short (less than 12
characters), or if a line is just a single repeated character, the
line is discarded. Once mcvert starts processing good data, no valid
lines are discarded. Thus, this heuristic can also discard
(unusually
formatted) valid and intended BinHex 4.0 lines. While there is no
way
to tune the heuristic (other than modifying the program and
recompiling), the heuristic can be completely disabled with the -H
option. So if you run into problems, put all the relevant lines into
one file, edit the file to remove any extraneous lines, and invoke
mcvert with the -H option.
It should be possible to discard bad input now and successfully
translate good input later, but bad input usually causes immediate
termination.
A more diligent person would support BinHex 3.0 and BinHex 2.0 and
BinHex 5000 B. C., but I've never seen or heard of anyone using them
in years.
OTHER PROGRAMS
There are a number of programs which run on the Mac and convert
between various Macintosh file formats. For example, here's what
info-mac/help/accessing-files.txt, as of 13Jun93, has to say about
converting between BinHex 4.0 and native Mac files:
You can also do the conversion on your Macintosh by using any of
a number of utilities, including BinHex 4.0, StuffIt, or Compact
Pro. We recommend using Compact Pro because it is slightly more
convenient and reliable than the other tools. Note: do NOT use
BinHex 5.0 as it is incompatible, for some very brain-damaged
reasons.
CompactPro is a wonderful piece of shareware. But if your needs are
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limited to expansion of BinHex 4.0 files, StuffIt or CompactPro
archives or AppleLink packages, then the freeware StuffIt Expander (v
3.0.3 as of 28Jul93) may be just what you want.
There are other programs available which run under UNIX and convert
between various Macintosh file formats. One of these programs may be
what you want to use if mcvert does not meet your needs. One
collection, called macutil, is available from various archives.
Here's what the comp.sys.mac.comm FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions),
Last-modified: Sat Jun 05 1993, has to say about it:
As of (8/92), macutil includes three programs:
hexbin
a program to convert BinHex 4.0 to MacBinary; it also
converts uuencode (and UULite) files to their native binary
format; support for .dl, .hex, and .hcx formats (all
predecessors of BinHex 4.0) also exists
macsave
a MacBinary filter program to convert between various
MacBinary representations, including a single .bin file,
three separate .data, .rsrc, .info files, and AUFS format.
macsave also allows one to "peek" inside MacBinary files
macunpack
a program to unpack PackIt, StuffIt, Diamond,
Compactor/Compact Pro, most StuffIt Classic and StuffIt
Deluxe, DiskDoubler, Zoom and LHarc/MacLHa archives.
It also decodes BinHex 5.0, MacBinary, uuencode, and UNIX
compress (ie: .Z suffix) files (as well as variants of
compress implemented by various Macintosh compress
programs).
Support for password protected and/or multi-segment
archives
of various types is minimal or non-existent.
SEE ALSO
hexbin(1), kermit(1), macbin(1), macunpack(1), macsave(1),
macutil(1),
ppmtopict(1), sit(1), unsit(1), xbin(1), xmodem(1)
AUTHORS
Doug Moore, Cornell University Computer Science. Based upon xbin by
Dave Johnson, Brown University, as modified by Guido van Rossum, and
upon unpit by Allan G. Weber, as well as upon correspondence with
several helpful readers of USENET.
Joseph P. Skudlarek (Jskud@wv.MentorG.com) made numerous enhancement
and maintenance releases. See the comments in mcvert.c for
additional
supporting characters.
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