Re: Latin_1 and portability

["Björn Persson" <bjorn_persson.spam-is-evil@sverige.nu>]

On 13 Dec 2003 16:17:06 -0600
Kilgallen@SpamCop.net (Larry Kilgallen) wrote:

> I have not heard of any troubles on such conversion, but the FTP
> conversion would obviously only be used when the source system
> indicated whether a file is text or not.

FTP clients typically let the user select ASCII mode or image mode
manually. If you want conversion you have to remember to switch to ASCII
mode before you transfer a text file, and then switch back to image mode
before you transfer a non-text file. People will inevitably forget this
now and then, and get either an unconverted text file or a corrupt non-text
file. There is a reason why the Portable Network Graphics format's "magic
signature" incudes both a CR/LF pair and a single LF. It was designed to
provide for easy detection of this kind of file corruption. It's very
clever - and should never have been necessary.

RFC 959 actually specifies that ASCII mode is the default, but luckily
clients that automatically set image mode seem to be common.

Björn Persson