I'd gently suggest that the best thing to do is to immediately post
the freely distributable base64 encoding programs to alt.sources along
with a man page that explains why base64 is technically better than
uuencode and perhaps mentioning that base64 is likely to be part of
the future MIME specification...
In general I think this is the right way to proceed. The main reason
people use uuencode is its wide availability and status as a de facto
standard. The first thing to do when getting rid of it -- and it
deserves to be gotten rid of -- is to make a superior competitor widely
available and publicize the fact. Mentioning "this is probably going
to be the new standard" in the publicity will help.
I don't think that trying to be persuasive would be likely to work
in a USENET context. A pity, but that seems to be the reality there.
I don't think it's so much unworkable as premature. You can't convince
people to switch until they see the alternative as real. That means
real software, distributed widely (remembering that many Usenet people
have no FTP access), available for them to use.
Once it looks like a real alternative, the way to be persuasive is to
stress the technical advantages: better protection against corruption,
fewer hassles, compatibility with upcoming software.
The other thing would be to offer the base64 program source to Henry
Spencer for inclusion in the C News distribution...
I need to finish reading the pile of MIME stuff I printed off the other
day, just to convince myself that there are no dire problems :-), but
I'm willing in principle. To some extent it is outside of what C News
really addresses -- C News is primarily the store-and-forward end of
news, and doesn't attempt to address the user interface -- but it could
still be relevant. (In particular, we've got a similar encoding used
for transmission over troublesome channels, and using base64 for that
might be sensible.)
... especially since
Henry is writing a son-of-1036 draft that is directly addressing what
extensions are suitable in that context.
Actually, to the maximum extent possible, my son-of-1036 draft avoids
issues like this in favor of simply including pointers to MIME and
friends. Working in a mention of base64 might be reasonable, though,
as a nudge in the right direction.
Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
henry(_at_)zoo(_dot_)toronto(_dot_)edu utzoo!henry