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alt.binaries.pictures.anime FAQ
version 1.8
last updated: 11 Nov 2003
Table of Contents
0 What's new? & credits
1 This & other newsgroups
1.1 New users
1.2 The purpose of this newsgroup
1.3 Related newsgroups
2 Posting hints
2.1 Post sizes
2.2 Labeling of posts
2.3 Misc. hints
3 Missing posts
4 SPAM What can I do against it?
5 Misc info and Links
6 The programs
6.1 How to download pictures with different newsreaders
6.2 How to post pictures with different newsreaders
6.3 Misc. tools
************************************************************************
[0] What's new? & credits
What's new:
Protected all e-mail addresses against windows e-mail viruses grabbing
e-mail addresses from the webbrowser cache...
Added a line on video game pics.
For easy navigation, the chapters in this FAQ have been marked in square
brackets, so to jump to chapter 2.1 , just use your newsreaders search/find
function to search for [2.1] .
This FAQ will be posted once a week to alt.binaries.pictures.anime .
This FAQ is also available on the WWW at http://anime-nl.net/abpafaq.html
Questions about the FAQ and comments can be sent to <abpafaq at anime-nl.net>
Credits:
Most of this FAQ was written by Marco van Loon AKA 'SD Maruko-kun'
<sdmarukokun at anime-nl.net> with the help of some a.b.p.anime (ir)regulars.
Chapters 6.1 and 6.2 are excerpts from the a.b.p.erotica.anime FAQ
which is updated & maintained by Cernovog <cernovog at servtech.com>
and AElf NightWind <AElf at swbell.net> , with some fixes taken from
the a.b.m.sailor-moon FAQ and other sources.
************************************************************************
[1] This newsgroup & others
[1.1] New users
"OK, I'm relatively new to the internet and especially to this
newsgroups stuff. Is there some interesting information out there
that might get me up to speed on all this quicker?"
Well, your ISP (Internet Service Provider) probably has some relevant
info on its website and in its local newsgroups and then there's the special
newsgroup for new users to read: news.announce.newusers ('announce'
meaning that it's a moderated newsgroup only for reading, not for
posting in this case). Any good little newsreader _should_
auto-subscribe you to this newsgroup when you start it for the first time.
If that newsgroup isn't loaded with Frequently Asked Question etc. documents
at the moment, then those are also archived at
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.announce.newusers/
Then there's the parody on bad usenet nettiquette: Emily Postnews:
http://www.templetons.com/brad/emily.html
************************************************************************
[1.2] The purpose of this newsgroup
Normally, the charter of the newsgroup would be included here,
but unfortunately the newsgroup creation message at:
ftp://ftp.isc.org/pub/usenet/control/alt/alt.binaries.pictures.anime.gz
doesn't really have a charter part.
This means we'll have to settle for the next best thing:
write a charter-like piece of text.
alt.binaries.pictures.anime is an unmoderated newsgroup for posting
fanart, screen captures etc. of anime and manga series.
Because of the existance of its companion group,
alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.anime , alt.binaries.pictures.anime should
be a newsgroup that's safe for people of all ages to read/browse.
Discussion of things relating to the posting of the pictures (scanning
tips etc.) is also welcome, but discussion threads that have gone
wildly off topic for this newsgroup should have their Followup-To:
set to one of the rec.arts.anime* discussion groups.
Since there is no alt.binaries.pictures.video-games or similar newsgroup,
pictures from non-Hentai Japanese anime-style computer/console games are also
welcome here.
What should not be posted:
- things that are clearly much more on topic in another newsgroup
(see also chapter 1.3: Related Newsgroups), like large animation files
or complete manga
- SPAM (see chapter 4: SPAM)
Gray area (opinions on these are devided):
- 'small' animation files ( < 5 MB)
(see also chapter 1.3: point a.b.multimedia)
- pictures having a tiny bit of nudity
Here we run into differing definitions of 'suitable for all ages'.
Some people think half a bare nipple is already too much, while others
think that's quite OK for a.b.p.anime when there's a warning about
nudity in the Subject: line.
- website advertizing; rec.arts.anime.fandom is probably the best
place for these. If you want to have your WWW site listed when posting
to a.b.p.anime ,please put it in your .sig .
************************************************************************
[1.3] Related newsgroups
* alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.anime
ecchi/hentai/sukebe anime & manga pictures.
A direct quote from the a.b.p.erotica.anime FAQ:
" Ironically, this group was created by someone on Netcom who did
_not_ like erotica anime (known also as h-anime, hentai anime, ecchi
anime, etc.). The purpose of its creation is to keep the hentai anime
out of alt.binaries.pictures.anime and the furry and cartoon newsgroups."
* alt.binaries.pictures.cartoons & alt.binaries.pictures.comics
The western counterparts to anime & manga.
For posting 'anime & manga inspired' artwork by western comic writers/
animators, it might be a nice idea to crosspost between a.b.p.anime and one
of these groups.
* alt.binaries.pictures.manga
For scans of complete manga.
* alt.binaries.sounds.anime
For all your anime sound files.
* alt.binaries.multimedia.anime
* alt.binaries.anime
The place for posting anime multimedia (avi, mov, mpg, rm, asf etc.) files.
Why animations should be posted there instead of in a.b.p.anime:
alt.binaries.pictures.anime has a volume of about 5-50 MByte/day, with the
average being something like 10-25 MByte/day. If someone posted a few
large (20 MByte+) animation files or very many smaller ones to
alt.binaries.pictures.anime over the course of only a few days,
this would result in the total volume for, say, 3 days of a.b.p.anime
being for ex. 250 MByte instead of the normal 30-75 MByte.
This might not be a problem for the poster's super duper newsserver,
but it might be a problem for people on less 'super' newsservers, since
this kind of high volume is what gets newsgroups dropped or article
retention time for the group reduced on servers that can't have
100 GByte+ of diskspace and a 10+ Mbit/sec newsfeed.
(If your ISP's newsserver carries none of those two multimedia newsgroups,
they probably don't want those huge binaries. If they only carry
a.b.m.anime , they probably don't carry a.b.anime because it wasn't properly
created in the first place. If they only carry a.b.anime and you want
a.b.m.anime , ask them for it and point them to the creation message at:
ftp://ftp.isc.org/pub/usenet/control/alt/alt.binaries.multimedia.anime.gz )
* rec.arts.anime.marketplace
Do your selling & trading of anime in this group.
* rec.arts.anime.misc & rec.arts.anime.fandom
Discussion of anime & related stuff.
* test groups: alt.test , alt.binaries.test and alt.binaries.test.yenc
Test Messages should generally speaking not be posted to a.b.p.anime.
The newsgroups alt.test , alt.binaries.test and alt.binaries.test.yenc exist
for this purpose. Your ISP may also have their own internal, private test
group. In practice people usually don't actually mind too much if test
messages are posted in a.b.p.anime, as long as the 'text' test posts don't
evolve into long joke/cascade threads and if the binaries tests you are
posting are on-topic and something 'new', not simply reposting something you
got from the group two days before.
************************************************************************
[2] Posting hints
[2.1] Post sizes
If you are going to post bigger files, like big, high quality JPG
files, please set the 'part size' in your news posting program to somewhere
in the 5000-8000 lines range for uuencoded (225-360 Kbyte raw, 310-500 Kyte
encoded) or in the 3000-3800 lines range for yEnc (a bit below 500Kbyte
encoded). A small number of newsservers won't accept articles/files >0.5 MB
(8000 lines uuencoded), while >1 MB (15000 lines uuencoded) results in a lot
of newsservers discarding your article. This means those articles won't be
visible on those newsservers and newsservers 'downstream' of those newsservers,
which vastly reduces the propagation of the pictures you post...
Setting the part size too small (like 900 lines, which was the default in
an old Forte Agent version) will result in a lot of parts and a higher chance
of at least one of them going missing.
************************************************************************
[2.2] Labeling of posts
To make it easier for people to know what they are going to download
before they download it, it's a good idea to clearly mark the name
of the series and other relevant info in the Subject: line.
Standardizing this also greatly helps those people using kill/select
files to exactly select what they do and don't want to see.
[name_of_anime] (for ex. [RANMA], [GitS], [LAIN]) is a good way of doing this.
In time, a list of _advised_ Subject: line tags might be posted as a
companion to the FAQ.
************************************************************************
[2.3] Misc. hints
If you scan/screengrab your own pictures for posting to this newsgroup
and want to make sure you give the downloaders the least possible amount
of trouble saving the files, it would be advisable to only use the
characters a-z A-Z 0-9 - and _ (and of course a . between the first
part of the filename and the extention...)
This avoids any special charecters that are disliked by the various
operating systems and filesystems.
If you're posting a large flood of pictures, please include one or more
thumbnail/contact sheet/index pictures, so people still on dial-up modems
can pick and choose the pics they want without having to download
the whole flood.
Please don't attach more than one file to one article.
Watch out how you use '( )' and '[ ]' brackets in your Subject: lines.
Most newsreaders key on the brackets to identify the parts of multi-part
binaries and a bracket in the wrong place can confuse some of them.
Some newsreaders even rely on the part number being the last item on
the Subject: line and if anything else containing numbers is there,
they get confused.
************************************************************************
[3] Missing posts
We've probably all seen posts that are missing some of their articles.
There are many reasons for this, some of them on the poster's side,
but most of them because of the design of usenet/how newsservers are
linked/lack of optimal functioning of many ISP newsservers...
- usenet isn't an instant medium. It's quite possible that due to
"usenet traffic jams" etc. one or more articles out a series of posted
pictures might arrive for ex. a day later than the rest. So don't be
too quick with requesting a repost, since the missing pictures might
still be trying to make their way to the newsserver you use. ;)
- some newsservers sometimes add articles out of order (for ex. article
123456 is added first and 123454 after that) and some newsreaders need
to explicitly turn on support for this quirky behaviour to see those
"numbered backwards" articles...
- Since many ISP newsservers are very incomplete or only keep the the pictures
on the server for about a day or both, dozens of pay-newsservers have
popped up all over the place that have retention times of a week or more
for binaries newsgroups and are much more complete than most
ISP newsservers. Prices range from about $6/month and up with most
of the big ones costing about $10/month for their cheapest account.
If the newsserver you're using is pretty bad, you don't want to switch to
an ISP with a better newsserver and those pay-newsservers are too expensive
for you, then here are some (nearly) free options to grab those missing
files:
- http://www.easynews.com has a 1-week/1GByte trial on new accounts;
retention AFAIK about 2 weeks, so probably only usable once.
- http://www.giganews.com has a 3-day/1GByte trial on new accounts,
so probably only usable once.
- http://www.supernews.com has a 30-day trial on new accounts,
so probably only usable once.
- http://www.teranews.com has a "1-time $3.95 fee" 50Mbyte/day download,
unlimited posting account with AFAIK 1 week retention
- http://www.readfreenews.com/ lists a set of 'test' servers, of which
the biggulp one also caries binaries. Being test servers means
that you wont have any guarantees that a) the servers will actually
be up, b) the max. users limit won't be reached and c) you get any
usable speed at the moment you want to access it. (max. speed is listed
as 5Kbyte/sec) OTOH, you don't have to register to use the servers
(which _does_ mean 'no posting' or else the servers would turn into
a spammers' h(e)aven...) .
- AUBA, http://archive.xusenet.com seems to have a web-based archive of
the alt.binaries.pictures.* newsgroups. Download limits are mentioned
but nowhere seem to be specified. Without subscribing, AUBA can also
be useful for some as a thumnail index for a.b.p.anime by going to
http://archive.xusenet.com/f/Usenet_by_category/Cartoons/alt.binaries.pictures.anime/
- Some of the other websites mentioned at http://www.yenc.org/tools.htm
seem to also offer free webbased access to a.b.p.anime and/or freely
accessable thumbnails for it.
************************************************************************
[4] SPAM What can I do against it?
"Hey, stupid spammer, go away! This is an anime newsgroup,
not a porn newsgroup!"
The spammer will very likely not read your post, since most spammers just
use text files containing hundreds or even thousands of names of newsgroups
that they use to cross- or multi-post their spam to. They probably
read none of those newsgroups they post to.
What you can do against it:
- Complain to the spammer's ISPs. That might get their accounts canceled.
There are special forms available on the WWW to do that semi-automagically.
http://www.rdrop.com/users/billmc/adcomplain.html
http://www.spamcop.net
- Ask your newsadmin to start running Cleanfeed
(http://www.exit109.com/~jeremy/news/cleanfeed.html ) and/or NoCeM on spool
(http://www.xs4all.nl/~rosalind/nocemreg/nocemreg.html )
From my experience, running both of these reduces the spam you see
by 80% compared to a non-filtered newsserver.
- I would strongly advise against trying to _cancel_ the spam, since:
a) because the cancelling system is so insecure, too few newsservers
still react on cancel messages to make it effective.
b) If you just start doing third-party cancels, you're very likely
putting your ISP/newsserver account at risk...
************************************************************************
[5] Misc info and Links
File formats:
Some common and less common file formats found in this newsgroup:
pictures:
.gif 8 bit (256 colors) or less, lossless compression
.jpg/.jpeg/.jpe 24 bit (true colors), lossy compression
Please note: conversion from GIF to JPG or the other way around almost
always results in quite a quality loss.
.png 8 or 24 bit, lossless compression ,designed as a replacement
for GIF (better compression), since a company (Unisys I believe)
is now asking a licensing fee for the GIF writing routines in any
for profit program that can write GIFs.
Programs like Paint Shop Pro can read/write this format.
.bmp 8 or 24 bit, windows BitMaP, no compression or limited lossless
compression. A conversion to .png will make the file smaller
or even much smaller without any change in quality.
archive formats:
.zip get winzip to decompress these if you're using windows,
else take a look on the FTP site mentioned below.
.rar, r00 etc. available at http://www.rarsoft.com
.lzh lharc, still quite widely used in Japan; see FTP site
ftp://ftp.elf.stuba.sk/pub/pc/pack/
file versification and repair:
.sfv Simple File Versification: a simple text file listing
checksums for the files posted, which can be used to:
a) check if any of the files got damaged during the
transport across usenet.
b) check if any files are missing/didn't arrive on
the newsserver you're using.
Many different programs to read/write sfv files are
freely downloadable from the web.
.par/.p01 etc. Parity ARchive 1.0: a set of files to check and repair files:
a) check if any of the files got damaged during the
transport across usenet.
b) check if any files are missing/didn't arrive on
the newsserver you're using.
c) if the number of missing or damaged files is less than
or equal to the number of parity files you received,
those missing and damaged files can be recovered.
.par2 Parity ARchive 2.0: similar to par 1.0 but better/more
efficient. Clients for both par 1.0 and 2.0 can be found
through http://parchive.sourceforge.net .
Encodings:
"Hey, I only see this kind of stuff in the file where's the picture?"
MPI7']WJ]>J?=J/%1&'&<V4=(NH1TB3R0M`TT?^)EY`[V7,2R>V,M[&Z7;P_&
M0'?7=/HIGX13N9WUZFG/'\MA))S=</J$[4NMQ5B6!]#'GY%BK5;[L=9I-)VT
That looks like part of an uuencoded file; look up your newsreader in
chapter 6.1 for instructions how to decode or chapter 6.3
for a separate uudecoder.
"Hey, I only see this kind of stuff in the file where's the picture?"
rXbazc36r6Msr3/oe3fAA793/RvwX6sF8l+rtdq1zfqvoyyvvwrcED6Pb7eNWrXarlavXv9Wrbki
/8AGoP+rt9uNy8tffP1fROGUK3eSeOE552+kxw/gl9qPIIPdRrPb6vDaTz/9yI5lnERB+UjEky7/
That looks like part of an base64 (mime) encoded file; look up your
newsreader in chapter 6.1 for instructions how to decode or chapter 6.3
for a separate base64 decoder.
"Hey, I only see this kind of stuff and then a bunch of garbage in the file
where's the picture?"
>=ybegin part=1 line=128 size=2574570 name=020 - Dangaioh.jpg
>=ypart begin=1 end=480000
That looks like part of an yEnc encoded file; look up your newsreader in
chapter 6.1 for instructions how to decode or chapter 6.3
for a separate yEnc decoder or yproxy.
Sites:
A good site with links to a lot of anime (or should that be:
"the best site"...) : http://www.anipike.com
An almost complete mirror of the good old Venice anime site:
ftp://ftp.sunet.se/pub/tv+movies/anime-manga/
V-spam:
Please don't v-spam! (posting a few of the same request below eachother
to make them more noticable) It's about as annoying as PEOPLE POSTING
IN ALL CAPS and is more likely to get your request ignored than filled...
Please don't post follow-ups to spam:
Any decent newsserver has a filter such as cleanfeed, spamhippo
or something similar to filter out 90+% of the spam, so people using
decent newsservers won't see the spam, but they _will_ see the replies!
Quoting style:
since this is a binaries newsgroup, this should be less relevant than in
some other groups. The style of quoting what the previous person said in
non-binaries treads seems, in all newsgroups, to be splitting in two camps:
the people that use the 'traditional' style of:
-----------------------------------------
> text part 1 by person 1
answer by person 2 on that text
> text part 2 by 1
answer by 2
-----------------------------------------
and removing any non-relevant text.
(dashes added to make those parts better recognizable)
and the people using Microsoft and Netscape's newsreaders (apparently
those newsreaders leave a few blank lines _above_ the quoted text and
position the cursor _there_):
-----------------------------------------
answer by 2 to text by 1
> whole text by
> person 1
-----------------------------------------
We seem to be getting more and more flamewars about those two quoting
styles in all kinds of newsgroups, so please let's not have any
flamewars about it here.
************************************************************************
[6] The programs
[6.1] How to download pictures with different newsreaders
Due to the fact that this FAQ would get way too long or would also need
splitting if I included the complete appendix B and C of the
a.b.p.erotica.anime FAQ here, I'm only including the info for the most
commonly used Windows newsreaders here.
If you need help with another newsreader, search for parts 2 and 3
of the a.b.p.erotica.anime FAQ in newsgroup rec.arts.anime.info at
http://groups.google.com .
A. Xnews
Archived at http://xnews.newsguy.com
1. single part
select the article then press F4 or choose "article" -> "decode"
or click on the decode icon
or just doubleclick on the article to auto-write it to disk
2. multi part
Xnews automagically combines multi part binaries, just like Forte Agent
does.
select the articles, then press F4 press "save".
Note: instead of 'selecting' articles, Xnews also lets you 'queue'
articles for decoding by clicking in the 'Q' column. Proceed the same
way as for selecting in this case.
Pro:
- free
- supports yEnc since version L5 (though the changelog reports some
fixes in later 5.xx.yy versions to support Agent's way of posting yEnc etc.)
- automagic combining of multi part binaries
Con:
-
B. Forte Agent
Archived at http://www.forteinc.com
1. single part
Select the article you want decoded then go to either "Decode Binary
Attachments" under the "File" menu or "Launch Binary Attachments" under
the "File" menu.
2. multi part
Select at least one part of the multi-part encoded file.
Go to either "Decode Binary Attachments" under the "File" menu or
"Launch Binary Attachments" under the "File" menu. Agent will
automatically gather the necessary parts, put them in order and
decode them from there.
Pro:
- supports yEnc since version 1.91
- automagic combining of multi part binaries
Con:
- Costs $29 after a 30 day trial or else it switches off a number
of features (AFAIK you'll lose MIME/base64 de/encoding and probably
also yEnc support)
C. Outlook Express
Archived at http://www.microsoft.com
1. single part
doubleclick the article, then rightclick on the picture, "save picture as"
or "file" menu, "save attachments..."
2. multi part
Ctrl-click on the parts you want to decode, then either rightclick and
choose "combine and decode" or choose "combine and decode" from the
"message" menu. You'll then get a dialog box where you can shuffle
the parts into the correct order, if they weren't already, and then
"file" menu, "save attachments"
Pro:
- 'free'
Con:
- doesn't support yEnc (though can be worked around using yproxy; see
the "Misc Tools" section)
- no automatic combining of multi part binaries
D. Netscape Navigator --W95
Info removed. If someone can provide me with more recent info, I might
put a section on Netscape/Mozilla's newsreader part back in.
E. America Online (v. 2.7)
Info removed. Is anyone still using the AOL 'newsreader'?
************************************************************************
[6.2] How to post pictures with different newsreaders
A. Xnews
To post - click on the 'Special' menu and select 'Setup Xnews'. Choose
the 'Compose' tab and check if the 'Cut size' size is set to 8000 lines
(this is about 500kB encoded). Next choose the 'Article' menu and
select 'Post to Newsgroup' (or just press 'p' instead of those two
steps). You can now write your post and use the 'Attachments' tab to
add the attachments.
B. Forte Agent
First select the group you want to post to. Choose "New Usenet Message"
from the "Post" menu. Press the "Attachments" button. This will bring up
a dialogue box allowing you to select an image file to attach. If you're
using the program online, hit "Send Now" to post. If you're using it
offline, hit "Send Later".
C. Outlook Express
To post - After you open up go to the tools menu. Click on accounts,
then double click on news. At the top you will see four sections you
can click on. Choose advanced. On the advanced menu look at the bottom
where it says posting. Make sure you check off "Break apart messages
bigger than 500kB". Next you select new message and select the item
you wished to post to that newsgroup, and then click send. That's it.
D. Netscape Navigator (v.4.03.1)
Info removed; very outdated.
C. America Online (v.2.7)
Info removed; very outdated.
D. Power Post 2000
Archived at http://www.cosmicwolf.com/power_post_2000.htm
The most common settings for the Subject: line in this program seem to be
[$1/$2] - $F
and
File $1 of $2 - $F
Please make sure that $F is the last item there, since that's the
filename plus the part number. (see chapter 2.3 of this FAQ)
Most if not all versions of Power Post 2000 seem to have problems
posting to glitchy newsservers, evident by sometimes series of a few pics
being missing in the middle of postings. Apparently PP2K's built-in
'retry' facility is absolutely not 100% bulletproof...
E. yEnc Power Post
Based off Power Post 2000, with yEnc posting added.
It doesn't seem to have a real homepage and seems to be available
in various versions, one of which is linked at:
http://www.geocities.com/zenwebpage/yEncFAQ.htm
Clarification:
Since the author of Power Post 2000 has stopped working on PP2K
to create a Power Post 2003, but is apparently taking very long
to do that, many people have taken the Power Post 2000 source code
to create their own enhanced versions of Power Post 2000.
One of the latest seems to be YEncPowerPostA&A, a further extention
of yEnc Power Post, which is available at http://powerpost.cjb.net
and even includes things like automatic sfv/par/par2 file generation.
TODO: somebody please supply more usage info on this much used auto-poster,
I don't usually use MS windows.
**************************************************************************
[6.3] Misc. tools
uudeview GPL (free) de/encoder for uuencoded, base64 (MIME), yEnc
and binhex files
Location: http://www.fpx.de/fp/Software/UUDeview/
OS: UNIX, windows, DOS, OS/2
yproxy sits on your computer between the newsserver and your
newsreader, converting any yEnc articles to uuencoded.
Usefull in combination with newsreaders that lack yEnc
support (such as OE).
Location: http://www.brawnylads.com/yproxy/
OS: Windows
Some pay-newsservers also have a web-frontend that does the combining
and decoding for you, letting you download the files using a standard
webbrowser.
irfanview picture viewer & thumbnail/index creator
Location: http://www.irfanview.com
OS: Windows
ADCSee picture viewer & thumbnail/index creator
Location: http://www.acdsystems.com
OS: Windows
************************************************************************