# yEncoding and Rosetta **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 1, 2002, 12:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yencoding-and-rosetta/101171 "2002-04-01T12:20:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Una\_Persson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/una_persson/32/346_2.png) [@Una\_Persson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Una_Persson)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2002, 12:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yencoding-and-rosetta/101171/1 "2002-04-01T12:20:32Z")
Umm…the thread looks damaged. I’m posting to see if this forces vBulletin to grab the OP for **AHunter3**. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2002, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yencoding-and-rosetta/101171/2 "2002-04-01T18:26:09Z")
?? Most odd. I knew something was amiss when I saw Anthracite’s name as most recent poster along with 0 as the number of replies… What I had been asking was: I’ve started to run across yEncoded downloads in places where previously they would be BinHex or UUEncoded, so I downloaded Rosetta, a yDecoder for the Macintosh. Snagged a yEncoded file to try it out on, dropped it on Rosetta, and it DID decode, or thinks it did, but the results are gibberish. Tried another file, same result. I’m wondering…could this be because yEncode-oblivious software such as a browser (which displays it onscreen as text) are garbling it somehow before and/or in the process of saving it as text to hard disk? Inserting or interpreting or removing characters that need to remain as they were? Or…is the yEncode format perhaps not quite ready for prime time? I know it uses some 8-bit characters in the code, whereas BinHex and UUEncode limit themselves to the safer/more compatible 7-bit character set (the standard American ASCII set, I believe). ---
**Author:** ![Hodge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Hodge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hodge)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2002, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yencoding-and-rosetta/101171/3 "2002-04-02T01:27:08Z")
**AHunter3** , check out [Why yEnc is bad for Usenet](http://www.exit109.com/~jeremy/news/yenc.html) written by newsadmin Jeremy Nixon explaining how yEnc works and pointing out its trouble spots. I don’t necessarily agree with all of his points and I think his logic is faulty in re: to bandwith usage and savings but he makes good points that yEnc’s implementation is faulty and breaks some usenet standards. However, it appears that Pandora’s Box has been opened and us usenet downloaders will have to deal with it. As for your specific problem, make sure that you have the most recent version of your decoder software as new versions of yEnc have been released frequently and aren’t always backwards compatible. ---
**Author:** ![Una\_Persson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/una_persson/32/346_2.png) [@Una\_Persson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Una_Persson)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2002, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yencoding-and-rosetta/101171/4 "2002-04-02T01:35:59Z")
Well…since I tried to save your OP and failed, I’ll try to offer some other assistance. From: [http://www.winews.net/yenc/user.htm](http://www.winews.net/yenc/user.htm) > [@](#): > > Why are so many yEncoded messages corrupt ? > > Unfortunately some of the first programs create malformatted yEncoded messages. Some did add an invalid validity code (CRC-check). Ask the posters to use the latest revision of these programs. Most bugs have been fixed in the last weeks. This issue is solved and will disappear soon. > > There are corrupt messages on Usenet all the time. And it could be expected that the number of corrupt posts would grow. Hardware is getting older and unreliable. There are more and more server involved in the news-transport. Any failure on one of them can cause corruption. This a unique Usenet problem -and now finally respected. > > In former times you did recognize corrupt binaries only if a CRC-checks (CSV-checker, SFV-checker) showed you that the binary was incorrect. Or the RAR/ZIP programs show that there is a CRC-check-failure. Or a movie does not play or does stop in the middle. > > yEnc capable newsreaders are checking every single message for corruption - and they issue a warning whenever a message is not OK. ---
**Author:** ![Una\_Persson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/una_persson/32/346_2.png) [@Una\_Persson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Una_Persson)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2002, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yencoding-and-rosetta/101171/5 "2002-04-02T01:37:22Z")
BTW, I would have answered sooner, but I’ve been trying to get the SDMB server to accept a single post for…oh, about an hour now…