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Fetching Archived Documents

The archived documents have been named in a way they can be easily identified.
Here is a list of the suffixes used:

bib  BibTex document
doc  MS-Word document
fm   FrameMaker document
mac  Macintosh document
pub  ThePublisher document
ms   nroff document (with ms macros)
man  nroff document (with man macros)
ps   Postscript document
tar  tar file
Z    Un*x compress' ed data - 16 bits
zip  PKzip' ped data
gz   GNU gzip' ped data

The documents are usually available in two formats: the original one, in which
the document was created (e.g. by some editor) and its corresponding PostScript
version.

When a document is composed of more than one file, it is archived using either
the standard tar Un*x command, or the PKzip program (particularly popular on
PC's).

Except for PKzip' ped files (which are already compressed), most (if not all)
of the other files contained on this site have been compressed, using either
the compress Un*x command or the GNU gzip program. This provides savings in two
ways: disk space and downloading time. This also requests a little more work:
the preparation of the compressed document is done here, but the reconstitution
of the document in a more accessible format is left to you!

This means that you need to transfer the files using the binary mode. If a
fetched file seems all messed up, the most probable cause of error was using
ascii mode instead of binary mode.

This also means that you need to have the necessary tools to uncompress ,
unarchive , print and/or edit the documents. Many of those tools are readily
available on Un*x platforms. Such is the case of nroff , tar and un/compress .
Others are part of the public domain, like GNU gzip (which may be found, in
particular, on the PREP.AI.MIT.EDU FTP Site).

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Examples

Here are some examples that might give you a hint.

Uncompressing

file.tar
     tar xf file.tar
file.Z
     uncompress file.Z
file.zip
     pkunzip file.zip
file.gz
     gunzip file.gz

Printing Compressed PostScript Documents

file.ps.Z
     zcat file.ps.Z | lpr -Ppostscript_printer
file.ps.gz
     gunzip -c file.ps.gz | lpr -Ppostscript_printer

Extracting Compressed tar Files

file.tar.Z
     zcat file.tar.Z | tar xf -
file.tar.gz
     gunzip -c file.tar.gz | tar xf -

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lotos-mgr@csi.uottawa.ca