> Is there one (or a *very small number) of sources for a thorough
> explanation of how and what uqwk/qwk and related utilities are and do?
> (Sorry for the tortured grammar, but it's early <g>).
>
> And, while I'm here ...
> *must I have uqwk on my ISP's system? Is there a version I could run
> *only on my PC? Would I need a C or C++ compiler for that?
I'm assuming you have shell access on your ISP's Unix box. Try "man uqwk"
or "man qwk" on the unix system to get the explanation of how to use either
command.
You don't have to have UQWK on your ISP its just faster. If you use uqwk
on your own machine or SOUPER or any other program that can extract from
an NNTP (Network New Transfer Protocol) server then all data is coming down
to you uncompressed. If you can run the utility on the ISP's machine then
you are communicating with the server at the speed of the ISP's LAN. This
is normally Ethernet which runs at 10 Mebabits, Just slightly faster than
your modem ;-) The utility then forms a SOUP packet, compresses it and
then sends it down to your machine. This is generally a lot faster than
doing the process on your own machine. The only problem is your ISP has to
support UQWK et al.
TTFN - Frank