Um, normally this is actually a hideous netscape/proxy interaction with
FTP URLs.
1: Proxies must decide whether to return things fetched with FTP as
(usually) text/plain or application/octet-stream, because FTP is
untyped data. If they return text/plain things like READMEs and such
are happily considered viewable by browsers and people are happy.
But then if something's downloaded the normal text->local-OS
conversion takes place, and that eats binaries if you're not using
UNIX. But if you mark things as application/octet-stream instead of
text then lots of browsers (like netscape) automatically start a
download dialogue instead of viewing thing, which is a pain if
you wanted to look at a README. The proxy can't win.
I imagine getting the browser to "prefer" application/octet-stream
when you ask to download and to "prefer" text/* when you just
follow a link would permit the proxy which does the actual FTP
fetch to use the content-negotiation stuff to set a type.
2: Netscape, helpful little bastard that it is, uncompresses as it fetches
and saves the uncompressed data. There are two things wrong with this:
firstly, I might not have had enough space for the uncompressed version
and secondly, netscape stupidly forgets to strip the .gz (or whatever)
extension, leaving the download directory riddled with .gz files
which are actually tars and so forth. Hideous.
| However, when it does this under DOS/Win it adds returns that
| patch can't handle. The original kernel.org doesn't gunzip the file, so
| there's no text conversion problem. In addition, the ascii converted
| file retains its .gz suffix...which is just plain wrong.
See if the behaviour persists if you use an HTTP URL instead of an FTP URL
(kernel.org supports both, no?)
-- Cameron Simpson, DoD#743 cs@zip.com.au http://www.zip.com.au/~cs/If anyone disagrees with anything I say, I am quite prepared not only to retract it, but also to deny under oath that I ever said it. - Tom Lehrer
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