To me, only binary mode makes sense, however ... Looking at the RFC you cited earlier, it seems that this ASCII crap is a legacy of the days of 7 bit (or less;-) character sets and oddball word sizes. It gives an example of DEC TOP-20s's, which stored text as five 7 bit bytes, left justified in 36 bit words.
This ASCII mode seems to have been intended so that text could be transferred between different systems and remain readable as it found it's way from one system to another. There were probably few, if any, binary formats that made sense between different systems (there were probably no standard graphics, audio or compression formats back then - FTP apparently started it's evolution back in 1971). So from that background, it made sense to provide at least a standardized method of transferring ASCII text and to make that method the "default". So, ASCII mode means text is stored in it's native form, on whatever system it's on. So, "arachne.cz" seems to be a *nix system, since it's native EOL representation is LF. If tomorrow "arachne.cz" is hosted on an M$ system <G>, it's native EOL representation will presumably become CRLF. Well, that explains why this EOL translation occurs in ASCII mode, but is it relevant in this situation? BAT files will only run on M$ systems, so unless they are edited/developed on an *nix system, there is no point to storing then in native format at "arachne.cz". Perhaps there might be some point to storing some TXT files in native format, if they are common between the DOS and Linux versions of Arachne (?). This would be the only justification for using ASCII mode at all, although I'm not sure what the situation is regarding any C code that may be common between the DOS and Linux versions of Arachne and what sort of EOL is acceptable to the respective C compilers. Anyway, that's about it for the pros and cons of ASCII mode, except to point out that, as far as I can tell, Internet Extorter only supports binary mode FTP. Joe. > -----Original Message----- > From: Clarence Verge [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Friday, April 05, 2002 7:24 AM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: File modes > > The file mode issue for arachne-dist is not resolved yet. > > In spite of my arguments and the example ftp sites and document posted, > I actually personally feel that binary mode is best, certainly for mixed > file types, as apparantly so do Glenn, Ted, and Joe. > I just wish there was no choice. :( > > If you check Michael's "readme.1st" you will see that it has only LFs > in it, but that could mean either he used ASCII mode upload or a Unix > style editor and binary upload. I believe the latter. > > The ftp system at arachne defaults to binary mode. > > What we need to do is make sure what eventually gets into /newbuild is > CONSISTENT so let's hear any comments for ASCII or against binary NOW. > > The fact that a visitor may download a file (with Arachne) that doesn't > work with Arachne can be resolved with a notice in the main directory. > I'll manage to live with the inconvenience of not being able to do > "instant" tests on new bits if we use binary. <G> > > - Clarence Verge. > -- Using Arachne 1.66 on DSL.
