Copyright 1994 by Lance Ellinghouse
 Cathedral City, California Republic, United States of America.
                        All Rights Reserved
 Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its
 documentation for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted,
 provided that the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that
 both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear in
 supporting documentation, and that the name of Lance Ellinghouse
 not be used in advertising or publicity pertaining to distribution
 of the software without specific, written prior permission.
 LANCE ELLINGHOUSE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES WITH REGARD TO
 THIS SOFTWARE, INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND
 FITNESS, IN NO EVENT SHALL LANCE ELLINGHOUSE CENTRUM BE LIABLE
 FOR ANY SPECIAL, INDIRECT OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES
 WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN
 ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT
 OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.

 Modified by Jack Jansen, CWI, July 1995:
 - Use binascii module to do the actual line-by-line conversion
   between ascii and binary. This results in a 1000-fold speedup. The C
   version is still 5 times faster, though.
 - Arguments more compliant with python standard