MCVERT(LOCAL) UNIX System V (10Nov93) MCVERT(LOCAL)
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.
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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 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
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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.
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.
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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 ".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.
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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".
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
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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 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
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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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