------------------------------------------------------------------------- Some common formats in public domain ------------------------------------------------------------------------- To save diskspace and transfer time, most files in anonymous ftp server are compressed in certain way. Here are some common compression format: (1)ZIP format This is the most common one for PC. You need unzip utility to retrieve files. The one that is provided in ifcss.org is pkunzip.exe. pkunzip.exe is in software/dos/utils/ directory. There are also zip/unzip utilities for unix and vms systems. They are available in software/unix/utils/ and software/vms/utils/ at ifcss.org, which are unz50p1.tar.Z and unzip.exe/unzip.readme respectively. You can use them to unzip files on your mainframe machines. (2)Unix Compressed files: Unix compressed file has an extension '.Z'. For example, cnd-g archive in ifcss.org is .Z compressed. Those files can be uncompressed by 'uncompress' command on Unix. '.tar.Z' is compressed unix tape archive. To extract files from such an archive file, uncompress first, then untar the '.tar' file. Example: uncompress gb2ps.tar.Z tar -xf gb2ps.tar There are also unix compression utilities for vms system. compress.exe in software/vms/utils directory is one of them. So you can uncompress a unix .Z file on a VMS system too. vmstar in the same directory is for tar and untar files on vms system. The compression/uncompression utilities for dos system, compress.exe and uncompress.exe are in software/dos/utils directory. The tar.exe in the same directory is for tar/untar utility on a PC/DOS machine. (3)Compression on Mac: Mac files in anonymous ftp often have .sit or sit.hqx extensions. To uncompress/unarchive these files, use StuffIt and Binhex. Details are given in MacHelp in software/mac directory at ifcss.org. (4)Other formats: The other compression formats often seen in anonymous servers are .lzh, .arc, .zoo. HXWZ uses extension .gb to indicate GB coded Chinese. If a file has an extension BIG or BIG5, it is BIG5 coded Chinese. GIF stands for Graphic Interchange Format. xxxx.gif's are pictures. All these compressed files such as .zip, .Z, .lzh, .sit are binary ones. They should be transferred in binary mode. .gif and .exe are also binary files. .hqx, uue, and .txt are text files. They should be transfered in ascii mode.