The Cutting Edge: COMPUTING / TECHNOLOGY / INNOVATION : Tinkering on the Internet? Here’s How to Stock Your Toolbox

It doesn’t take much beyond a computer and a modem (and perhaps a capacity for wasting time) to have fun in cyberspace. But just as homeowners over the years acquire a number of tools they couldn’t live without, on-line veterans typically have several items that make exploring cyberspace more rewarding, less painful or both.

We’ll assume here that you want to roam beyond, say, America Online to try smaller bulletin board systems (BBSes) and the Internet. Perhaps you even want to dial into the computer at work, or the computer system at the offices of your clients. Here’s a rundown on some of the basics you’ll find useful. Exploring cyberspace shouldn’t bankrupt you, so almost everything recommended here is free or cheap.

Perhaps the first thing you need is a decent telecommunications program. Windows users--that’s probably most of us these days--already have Windows Terminal, and it actually works. But it lacks many features you’ll want sooner or later, particularly the ability to capture everything coming across your screen, so get something better.

Several shareware packages offer terrific value in this department. WinRamp Lite, for example, has an impressive array of features that includes floating toolbars that can be customized, Zmodem for fast and easy file transfers, multiple simultaneous terminal windows, RIPScrip support for BBSes that use this graphics system, and more. If you keep the program, registration is just $35. For more information, e-mail info@vironix.com.

Speaking of file transfers, you’ve probably noticed that many of the files you want to download have the “.zip” extension. That’s because they’ve been compressed to save on storage and transfer times, using a program named Pkzip. In order to use these files, you first have to “unzip” them. The Pkzip package for zipping and unzipping is available all over cyberspace as pk204g.exe. It’s a self-extracting zip file, meaning you just run it and it unzips itself. You can also find shareware Windows shells for Pkzip, which is a DOS program.

Now let’s say you’ve created a nifty Word for Windows template for writing screenplays, and you want to send it to someone in New York. Trouble is, you’re on America Online and your friend gets e-mail via MCI Mail, so you can’t just attach the file to a message.

What the two of you need is uuencode and uudecode, a free pair of DOS utilities that make it possible for binary files to be posted all over the Internet. Both are widely available on the major on-line services and the Internet.

Let’s consider your WinWord template. To send it to your friend, you simply uuencode it. This creates a sort of text image of the file while leaving the original intact.

Then you paste this “text” into your e-mail message and send it off. When it arrives, your friend can uudecode it, which translates the “text” back into a binary file. It’s really easy. Binary files are uuencoded all over the ‘Net, which is how it is possible for Internet newsgroups, which can carry only text, to contain so many pornographic images.

Photos, after all, are binary files. Good Internet newsreading programs--such as tin--will ask if you’d like to uudecode any files you are saving. If you plan to do a lot of uuencoding, there’s even a shareware telecommunications program called WinTel that has uuencode/uudecode built in, along with “.gif” and JPEG viewers.

Indeed, viewers should be a part of every wanderer’s tool kit. You need something for looking at .gif, JPEG and other formats. Good shareware products for this purpose abound, but for Windows you might want to consider a shareware product called Drag & View, which will view almost anything--including, say, a WordPerfect file, even if you don’t have WordPerfect. A similar commercial product is Eclipse Find, whose main role is indexing your hard drive for fast searches.

As a Windows user, I’d find cyberspace a pain without a good clipboard collector. (For non-Windows users, the clipboard is where Windows stores the last item that you’ve copied or cut.) They’re everywhere as shareware, and I use a cheapie (because I am a cheapie) called Yet Another Clipboard Collector. For top-of-the-line clipboard control, try ClipMate, also shareware.

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Basically these handy little devils give the clipboard the ability to hold more than one thing at a time. A good clipboard collector will store up everything you cut or copy and let you to go back and choose which one you want to paste. ClipMate even lets you combine several clips into one large one.

Thus, if you see https://www.onramp.net/shopping in (a pretty cool World Wide Web shopping site, by the way) and then see the gopher address una.hh.lib.umich.edu, you can just copy them to the clipboard one after the other and keep going. And by copying and pasting, rather than writing them down and typing them in again, you eliminate the chance of errors.

Finally, if you do a lot of e-mailing, you might want to consider an off-line reader. If you use a BBS for your e-mail, you’ll want one with “.qwk” support. This enables you to quickly retrieve all new mail and forum postings, log off, and respond off-line, where you can read everything at your leisure.

More Computer News

* The TimesLink on-line service includes a large selection of articles and information about computers and technology in its Business section. Sign on and “jump” to keyword “Computer News.”

Details on Times electronic services, B4

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Mailing Sights, Sounds in Windows

To ease the task of e-mailing pictures, sounds, word-processor files and other binaries, try a clever little Windows utility called WinCode. Besides handling uuencoding and uudecoding with aplomb, the program will zip or unzip the file as well, without forcing you to do any work at the DOS command line. It supports drag and drop, too; just click a file from File Manager and drag it over to the minimized WinCode icon.

If you want, WinCode will even hook itself into another Windows application, creating a menu item in your telecommunications program, for example, so WinCode is always there for you. Uuencoding and uudecoding are built in, but you’ll need to get pkware on your own. Most impressive of all, WinCode is free, but without the usual Help file. If you want that, it’s $5, but the program comes with a good help text file, so it’s not crucial. WinCode, from Snappy Inc., is available on CompuServe, America Online and elsewhere.