Re: [MacPerl-Porters] default type/creator

On Thu, 25 Oct 2001 08:04:57 -0400, Chris Nandor wrote:

>>I tend to agree that, when a file is transferred as text, the default
>>type may well be text, but when transferred as binary, it should be some
>>binary type, definitely not text.
>
>There's no way to handle that in MacPerl itself, that I can think of.  It
>has to be in the perl code doing the downloading.

But it makes an interesting philosophical question. So we have these
additions we'd like to put into Net::FTP, but only for Mac. So where do
we put it?

 A) We make a new wrapper module, say, Net::FTP::Mac, which you have to
use instead of Net::FTP, and which is mainly a wrapper around it. With
OO, this shouldn't be hard, but if there's a API for plain function
calls, this would be a more "interesting" exercise.

 B) We insert hooks into the standard Net::FTP, which could call out for
platform specific extensions, something along the lines of File::Spec.

The kind of extensions I'm thinking about here: you could go look in a
list of file extensions and see if a file needs to be transferred as
text, or a binary (which would be the default), like WS_FTP does. For
Mac, you have the default creator and file type. For the Mac, you'd use
Internet Config, but not on the other platforms.

I must say that from an implementor's point of view, I like A, because
it would leave the original Net::FTP alone. But from a user's point of
view, I prefer B, because A would make your user program platform
dependent. Perhaps there's another way: an invisible wrapper around the
original Net::FTP? No, that's yucky.

-- 
	Bart.