# Re: URLs -- the ftp case

Peter Deutsch (peterd@bunyip.com)
Fri, 29 Oct 1993 12:48:40 -0400

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    Message-Id: <9310291648.AA05800@expresso.bunyip.com>

    From: Peter Deutsch <peterd@bunyip.com>

    Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1993 12:48:40 -0400

    In-Reply-To: Tim Berners-Lee's message as of Oct 29, 13:59

    To: timbl@nxoc01.cern.ch, "Mark P. McCahill" <mpm@boombox.micro.umn.edu>

    Subject: Re: URLs -- the ftp case

[ Tim wrote: ]

. . .
> The FTP convention -- how it actually is used --
> is that you guess the transfer mode from the filename.
> That's how it happens. Its broken. You can't fix
> FTP though. . . .

Although your point that FTP lacks certain functionality
is well taken, it is probably a bit of an over-statement
to say "you can't fix FTP". There are periodic calls for
an FTP extensions working group, options and extentions
have been added to telnet over the years and so on. If, in
the course of on-going development we start to find
limitations in a system, we should consider using this
knowledge to push change, not just throw up our hands and
say "it can't be done".

In that spirit, I'd like a chance to talk to both you and
Mark next week about some of the short-comings we've
currently identified in WWW and Gopher. The more I work
with them, the more I feel their "browswer" orientation is
going to cause problems over time. For example, it
currently requires some jumping through hoops to get a
user of either system to fill out information or interact
with a process at the server end. I know we can escape to
telnet, but for what we are trying to do right now that's
really not good enough. My question will be if either of
you have identified this as a problem and are addressing
it (I know what Gopher+ has done with the ASK block, but
that seems a fairly tentative first step. I'd really like
a more interactive capability).

Anyways, we'll talk in the bar.

- peterd

    --

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