Issue 4208: ftam/ftp issue: binary vs text file transfer (ftamftp-ftf) Source: DSTC (Mr. Ted McFadden, mcfadden@dstc.edu.au) Nature: Uncategorized Issue Severity: Summary: ftam/ftp issue: binary vs text file transfer -------------------------------------------- Both FTP and FTAM make distinctions between text and binary files and use <CR><LF> newline encoding for text file transfer. FTAM has provision for identifying text or binary files by the FTAM type (FTAM1,FTAM2...) whereas FTP requires the client and server to somehow ascertain the file type before transfering as either text or binary. It also appears that depending on the real filestore implementation, an FTAM responder may not always be able to authoritatively determine a file's type unless it has been explicitly set by a user. Having said that, does the ftam/ftp idl need to allow for text/binary transfer in the transfer, append, and insert operations? Or for the purposes of this specification are all transfers to be considered binary? Requested Action: Some words in the specification about text vs. binary files. Resolution: Treat all file transfers as binary. Revised Text: Section 2.1.4/ Binary File Transfer states: All file transfers are binary. This service has no concept of character code-sets and does not make a distinction between text and binary files as defined by ftp and ftam. Actions taken: February 20, 2001: received issue Discussion: End of Annotations:===== Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 16:33:41 +1000 From: Ted McFadden To: issues@omg.org Cc: tmcf@ooc.com.au Subject: ftam/ftp issue: binary vs text file transfer Message-ID: <20010220163341.A10708@ooc.com.au> Mail-Followup-To: issues@omg.org Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0i Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-UIDL: l04e9VO&!!Ria!!mKZ!! Hi, ftam/ftp issue: binary vs text file transfer -------------------------------------------- Both FTP and FTAM make distinctions between text and binary files and use newline encoding for text file transfer. FTAM has provision for identifying text or binary files by the FTAM type (FTAM1,FTAM2...) whereas FTP requires the client and server to somehow ascertain the file type before transfering as either text or binary. It also appears that depending on the real filestore implementation, an FTAM responder may not always be able to authoritatively determine a file's type unless it has been explicitly set by a user. Having said that, does the ftam/ftp idl need to allow for text/binary transfer in the transfer, append, and insert operations? Or for the purposes of this specification are all transfers to be considered binary? Requested Action: Some words in the specification about text vs. binary files. Cheers, Ted -- Ted McFadden tmcf@ooc.com.au Object Oriented Concepts Inc. - An IONA Company http://www.ooc.com Suite 4, 8 Martha St. +61-7-3324-9633 Camp Hill, Brisbane, 4169, QLD. Australia Date: Wed, 23 May 2001 14:56:17 +1000 From: Ted McFadden To: ftamftp-ftf@omg.org Subject: Issue 4208 Comment Message-ID: <20010523145616.G27054@iona.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0i Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-UIDL: %ZX!!k(*e9^JB!!fcIe9 Issue 4208, Binary vs. Text file Transfer Hi, I have mixed feelings about this. Certainly the easiest thing to do is to treat all transfers as binary. FTP clients usually rely on the user to explicitly set the transfer mode to TEXT/BINARY or `guess' it based on the extension ".txt", some even will do tricks if the source or destination files appear to be gzipped. FTAM servers, from what I can gather, in many cases map onto a regular old file system and can only tell a text from a binary file, if someone has set up some additional shadow information file. It appears that a CosFileTransfer server can't always tell whether a file is text or binary. I'd be very interested to hear what others have to say on this matter. Thinking along the lines of the prototype we have, it would be possible if a file was `known' to be text for it to advertise something like "corba:text" or "tcp:text" as its transfer protocol. And then the matching endpoint could be set to "???:text" as well. This would allow the File interface operations to transfer text files correctly if the type was known. If the type wasn't known and you wanted FTP style `client knows best' you would create the end points directly and initiate the transfer. This is not a big deal, as the File interface implementations of transfer, append, etc... are very small wrappers around this type of operation. Cheers, Ted -- Ted McFadden ted.mcfadden@iona.com IONA Total Business Integration (TM) Suite 4, 8 Martha St. +61-7-3324-9633 Camp Hill, Brisbane, 4169, QLD. Australia