Q25b: How do I view fractal pictures from alt.binaries.pictures.fractals?

A25b: A detailed explanation is given in the "alt.binaries.pictures FAQ" (see "pictures-FAQ"). This is posted to the pictures newsgroups and is available by ftp:
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu:/pub/usenet/news.answers/pictures-faq/.

In brief, there is a series of things you have to do before viewing these posted images. It will depend a little on the system you are working with, but there is much in common. Some newsreaders have features to automatically extract and decode images ready to display ("e" in trn) but if you don't you can use the following manual method.

Manual method

  1. Save/append all posted parts sequentially to one file.
  2. Edit this file and delete all text segments except what is between the BEGIN-CUT and END-CUT portions. This means that BEGIN-CUT and END-CUT lines will disappear as well. There will be a section to remove for each file segment as well as the final END-CUT line. What is left in the file after editing will be bizarre garbage starting with begin 660 imagename.GIF and then about 6000 lines all starting with the letter "M" followed by a final "end" line. This is called a uuencoded file.
  3. You must uudecode the uuencoded file. There should be an appropriate utility at your site; "uudecode filename " should work under Unix. Ask a system person or knowledgeable programming type. It will decode the file and produce another file called imagename.GIF. This is the image file.
  4. You must use another utility to view these GIF images. It must be capable of displaying color graphic images in GIF format. (If you get a JPG or JPEG format file, you may have to convert it to a GIF file with yet another utility.) In the XWindows environment, you may be able to use "xv", "xview", or "xloadimage" to view GIF files. If you aren't using X, then you'll either have to find a comparable utility for your system or transfer your file to some other system. You can use a file transfer utility such as Kermit to transfer the binary file to an IBM-PC.

Automated method

Most of the news readers for Windows or Macintosh, as well as web browsers such as Netscape or MSIE will automate the decoding for you. This may not be true of all web browsers.