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ASCII versus Binary

April 27, 2011 12:12pm

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  • #1 / Apr 27, 2011 12:12pm

    julianps

    175 posts

    As I struggle around trying to get EE2 working and bump into others encountering similar problems I decided to look a little closer into the ASCII versus Binary question.

    This is interesting because for my FTP client (Transmit V3) the default ASCII file extensions are are provided as;

    .c, .cgi, .cp, .cpp, .css, .h, .hqx, .htaccess, .htm, .html, .java, .l, .m, .p, .pas, .php, .php3, .pl, .pm, .py, .rb, .sh, .shtml, .txt, .uu, .uue and .y

    Interestingly given that all sorts of faults I see are javascript related, there’s no .js in this list.

    So, two questions;

    1) should javascript files as included in the EE2 distribution be uploaded as ASCII or binary; and,

    2) if they’re wrapped up into a .zip file (binary) and unpacked by the cPanel File Manager (as a binary archive) does this exempt them from these considerations (ie they’ll emerge in the required format automatically)?

    Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

    Jules

    ////////////////////////////////////

    As a footnote and despite much comment on this subject both in the EE documentation (.js = ASCII) elsewhere on the threads like this from the developer of smartftp

    Then go to Settings->Transfer->ASCII/Binary and click on “Set Defaults”

    This should remove everything but .pl files (from) the ASCII list.

    On the other side of the argument comes a defence of ASCII predicated upon the view that, in the case of *NIX boxes in particular, ASCII lets the FTP server set the line endings to LF whereas Binary has them hard coded into the last byte (maybe as CRLF) and this can cause difficulties.

    ASCII Files
    .htm .html .shtml .php .pl .cgi .js .cnf .css
    .forward .htaccess .map .pwd .txt .grp .ctl

    Binary Files
    .jpg .gif .png .tif .exe .zip .sit .rar .ace
    .class .mid .ra .avi .ocx .wav .mp3 .au

    Via Google

  • #2 / Apr 28, 2011 4:55am

    John Henry Donovan

    12339 posts

    Jules In France,

    If you are using SmartFTP then there is no need to make any custom changes like that. Just use the Auto setting and it should be fine

    What are you struggling with to get EE working?
    Do you have another thread?

  • #3 / Apr 28, 2011 7:49am

    julianps

    175 posts

    Jules In France,

    If you are using SmartFTP then there is no need to make any custom changes like that. Just use the Auto setting and it should be fine

    What are you struggling with to get EE working?
    Do you have another thread?

    I have threads open on a number of subjects relating to the 7+ days I’ve been trying to get EE2 to work.

    Right now I’m at the point of agreeing with my client to roll back to 1.7.0 and be done with it.

    The persistent issues we have on this 1.6.8 => 2.1.3 EE+MSM upgrade are that the File Manager will upload and select files, but then demands a manual link to them (a deal-breaker for the client) and whenever we open the Writemode HUD we cannot close it without committing to changes (the ‘X’ does not operate). We’re running ExpressionEngine version 2.1.3:20110411 on this account.

    I had thought a lot of these functions were javascript-based but we reloaded all javascript as ASCII this morning to no good effect so, unless we can come up with a miracle today we’ll dump EE2 over the weekend.

    We did a clean install (EE213: 20101220 ) on another account on the same server and whilst the File Manager works we have similar issues with the Writemode HUD.

    Then we have the issue of the admin.php logging users into the wrong ‘site’ and other issues relating to sessions and the persistence of cookies that have all eroded the client’s confidence generally.

    Thankfully he hasn’t access to setting up new channels or he’d know there are issues with accessing themes too; though we have identified that MSM is deeply upset by some of the config.php settings we’ve no idea to what extent these issues relate to caching, masking the system folder, upload errors or a 101 other voodoo factors that have lost us almost 60 billable hours on a 5 hours job.

    So yes, EE2 is not a software we’ll be upgrading again, certainly not whilst it’s in 2.1.x anyway, and unless we can get the referenced clean install to work as well we’ll not be offering new installations either - we’re not system engineers so the overhead’s simply too great.

    Jules

  • #4 / Apr 29, 2011 5:01pm

    Brandon Jones

    5500 posts

    You know the drill, Jules! 😉 Closing this one as we’re pretty sure it isn’t an FTP transfer issue.

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