# Re: URLs -- the ftp case

Larry Masinter (masinter@parc.xerox.com)
Fri, 29 Oct 1993 14:04:24 PDT

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    To: timbl@nxoc01.cern.ch

    In-Reply-To: timbl@www3.cern.ch's message of Fri, 29 Oct 1993 09:53:41 -0700 <93Oct29.095406pdt.2800@golden.parc.xerox.com>

    Subject: Re: URLs -- the ftp case

    From: Larry Masinter <masinter@parc.xerox.com>

    Message-Id: <93Oct29.140427pdt.2795@golden.parc.xerox.com>

    Date: 	Fri, 29 Oct 1993 14:04:24 PDT

I'd like to move the 'guessing' about file types from 'ftp access' to
'ftp directory listing'. I.e., when you list the directory to get a
set of URLs, put all the file type guessing there, rather than 'given
a full FTP path, guess what file type it is'.

I'll claim that this is more true to 'how FTP works' anyway: when
you're listing directories, you have to know if you're talking to VMS,
Unix, VM, macintosh, PC, etc. in order to get back reasonable path
names.

When you're just fetching a file, you don't.

When you list the directory, you can often tell which things are
sub-directories and which things are text and binary. When you are
just given the path, that's harder to tell.

In fact, it might be that a 'ftp:' url for a directory should be
tagged with
directory/unix
directory/vms
directory/vm
directory/macintosh
or
directory/unknown

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