WebPositive unable to handle ftp urls

[Disreali]

Web+ reformats ​ftp:// url's and adds an ​http:// to the beginning. Using web+ from Alpha 4.1 install.

[tidux]

This behavior is no longer present in hrev45834. WebPositive now spawns a Terminal window running /bin/ftp for ​ftp:// links.

[Disreali]

That is only a stop-gap.

Web+ should be able to handle ftp urls bt itself, instead of spawning a terminal. The fact that it can't is ludicrous. I don't know of any modern web browsers that lack the ablility to handle ftp urls.

On hrev45807 web+, typing "​ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/" into the address bar brings up a google search.

I'll test post hrev45834, but web+ still should be able to handle ftp urls on its own, like Firefox or IE do.

[Disreali]

Possibly related to ticket:6377

[tidux]

I'd rather have it spawn /bin/ftp in a Terminal than have the usual half-assed browser FTP implementation where you have very little control over the details of the FTP connection and can't upload.

[Disreali]

@tidux

A typical web browser user only wants to have the ftp archive listed as it is in most modern web browsers, such as IE or Firefox, and would be confused by WebPositive's current behavior.

Advanced users, which you seem to be, would already use a dedicated ftp client or ftp through the terminal.

WebPositive needs to address a typical users needs, and not confuse them by opening a terminal window. As previously stated, Web+ needs to be able to handle ftp url's, as all modern web browsers currently do.

[Coldfirex]

I would vote that we close this ticket. All major browsers have stopped including the FTP protocol now. A dedicated FTP client should be used.

[nephele]

I disagree, on the grounds that we support gopher too. :) ​https://review.haiku-os.org/c/haiku/+/2479

[pulkomandy]

Replying to nephele:

I disagree, on the grounds that we support gopher too. :)

That argument is invalid, Gopher is 20 years more recent than FTP ;)

[nephele]

Replying to pulkomandy:

That argument is invalid, Gopher is 20 years more recent than FTP ;)

From my perspective they are both "old" protocols :P

WebPositive now spawns a Terminal window running /bin/ftp for ​​ftp:// links.

It still does this, but unfortunately:

/bin/sh: line 1: ftp: command not found
Press any key

I would expect WebPositive to hand off uri-schemes it doesn't understand to the OS indiscriminately and not run some commands in Terminal.

In any case, are there still any public ftp servers left? Seeing as we have a ftp server included in the base install it probably makes sense to support this, but then again we could argue that the server should be removed instead in favor of using sftp or sctp.

webkit has some support for ftp we can probably use aswell, our netservices don't support it currently (but seeing as it is unstable again we are free to experiment to add it if we want without abi problems. :)

[pulkomandy]

In any case, are there still any public ftp servers left?

• ​https://ftp.gnu.org (from the GNU project)
• ​http://ftp.lip6.fr/pub/ (containing various old and new material about a variety of computer things, including a mirror of Haiku releases)

And probably many others as well.

There is a work in progress patch on Gerrit to add FTP support to libnetservices, but it indeed does not fit very well in the current design. I think that's good, we should see if it's possible to make the design fit better to non-HTTP protocols.