Re: Call for Community Feedback: Retiring IETF FTP Service

[tom petch <[e-mail]>]

On 30/11/2020 12:43, Julian Reschke wrote:
> Am 30.11.2020 um 13:30 schrieb tom petch:
>>
>> On 28/11/2020 16:47, Julian Reschke wrote:
>>> Am 28.11.2020 um 13:49 schrieb tom petch:
>>>> Retiring the FTP service will impair my ability to contribute to the
>>>> IETF.
>>>>
>>>> For a long time, I struggled to download copies of IETF documents in
>>>> the
>>>> form that the author intended.  The topic arose on this list and I was
>>>> pointed at the FTP service and this solved my problems; the amount of
>>>> work I could do in the IETF increased.
>>>> ...
>>>
>>> Ok, I'll bite.
>>>
>>> Are you saying that when you open
>>>
>>>    https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7230.txt
>>>
>>> in a browser and do a "save as...", you're getting a broken document?
>>
>> Yes.
>
> Well, in that case we should figure out what's going on. This is the
> official plain text file published by the RFC Editor. If you can't
> retrieve and save it without getting broken content, something is
> seriously wrong with either your client or your network connection.
>
>> This is not the URL I used before, that came from a post from Roman and
>> was for an older RFC.
>
> It would help if you provided a concrete example HTTP(S) URL for an RFC
> (or an I-D) that fails for you (and optimally a description that the
> failure exactly is).
>
>> Be clear, I want ASCII text, which I can view anywhere, with a wide
>> range of tools, edit (well not often RFC) and will usually be what the
>
> Yes. That's the case with the text/plain resource mentioned above.
>
>> author created.  So given the choices with 'save as' I will choose text
>> and then the saved file starts with the complete CSS  (gee thanks web
>> designer, how is it you always know better than me what it is that I
>
> That would be the case if you save an *HTML* resource, not a plain text
> resource.
>
>> want:-)  The other three options all give me different forms of the
>> HTML.  So yet another way for HTTP/HTML to not give me what I want!
>
> What "other three options"?

Julian

I keyed in the URL you gave above for RFC7230.  Using Internet Explorer 
(as installed by HP with Windows), 'Save as' gives me the four choices of

Webpage complete htm html
Web Archive single file mht
Webpage HTML only htm, html
Text File txt

from which I chose Text File.  Viewing the result with Wordpad gives me 
the CSS followed by the text.  The text is ok AFAICT but all that CSS is 
unwelcome and is what I referred to as broken.

File-Properties tells me that this is
Type HTML Document
which seems plausible with a
Created: 30/11/2020 (I am in a European Locale)
which is the same for all that I look at on the rfc-editor site via 
https: - accessing the IETF site File-Properties shows the date as
Not Available

I see no sign of Text/Plain (which, as you gather, is close to my heart:-)

Tom Petch


> Best regards, Julian
>
> .
>