# Re: a better ftp URL

Tim Berners-Lee (timbl@www3.cern.ch)
Fri, 26 Nov 93 15:47:14 +0100

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    Date: Fri, 26 Nov 93 15:47:14 +0100

    From: Tim Berners-Lee <timbl@www3.cern.ch>

    Message-Id: <9311261447.AA00441@www3.cern.ch>

    To: Jon Knight <J.P.Knight@lut.ac.uk>

    Subject: Re: a better ftp URL

1. I agree with Jon Knight and Mark McCahill
that it would be nice to slip the
FTP transfer type in subtly so that the option of using
untyped names it left open -- for one thing because
untypednames are all you can automatically get from
an FTP server using NLIST.
It would also be nice if it were somehow put in so that

it didn't llok like something else.

A problem with putting it to the right of the host:port
is that the parsing of that is common to many url types.
In fact that's garbage isn't it-- the password is FTP-specific.
So in fact that does make more sense. Hmmm.

And it does leave the path intact which is nice.

f t p : / / [ user [ : passwd ] @ ] host [ : port ] [ @ type ] /

Comments?

2. I propose that the type letters be the ones in the FTP RFC, ie
I for "image" not "b" for "binary", etc.

3. John asks if "file": should be put into the spec.
It is as he says used by all real WWW browsers in order
to integrate the local file system with the web.
I had removed it from the URL spec becasue there were
comments at the IETF about it not being proper because
it didn't reference a network entity, wasn't globally valid,
and all that stuff. However, now that this group has decided
to allow nntp://host/news.group/articlenumber which is
quite local I would suggest that file: should be put into the spec
as everyone will in fact want to use it.

I also suggest that when file: is used that the fqdn of the
host (if there is one, otherwsie "localhost") be put on
just so that if the URL is used on a different host,
at least the software can say "sorry, that is a local URL
and not valid here". The fallback to anonmous FTP in this
case should I suggest be deprecated. Comments?

Tim BL

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