Gavin wrote...

>This whole "tenex/byte" thing bugs the hell out of me, and if I had the time
>I'd go look at the actual messages going back and forth to the 3000 FTP
>server to see what's going on.
 ...
>As I said, I don't have time to investigate further, but it appears to me
>that nobody discussing FTP in relation to the 3000 really understands the
>terms they are talking about, and it would be great if someone could figure
>all this out for us! (Cuz I know at least *I'm* confused)

While I am not an ftp expert, it was always my impression (read: guess)
that the bytestream/tenex/quote-type-L-8 switch was merely a means to
select the desired file type that should be created on the 3000 side...
like defined in the first 3 lines of BLDPARMS.ARPA.SYS -- I did never
hear about the "historic" meaning of the tenex / type L 8 before Gavin's
posting educated me...

Maybe the FTP instructions should be changed to something like

  ftp> binary
  ftp> put pcFile hostFile;REC=,,B

to make it less confusing and still force a bytestream file being
created on the 3000 side? This flavour would probably even work
the same with DOS ftp, Unix ftp, Linux ftp, Mac ftp, WRQ ftp, etc.

On the other hand, we might even use the following flavour and
eliminate the need for the /bin/frombyte step before the restore:

  ftp> put pcFile hostFile;CODE=STORE;REC=,,,BINARY;DISC=???

Well, and to add put some more oil into the confusion discussion,
in my own realm, I typically use a combination of store and tar to
package MPE files for internet transmission...

  :file myfile=/tmp/myfile.store; dev=disc
  :store @[log in to unmask]; *myfile
  :xeq /bin/tar "cvzf /tmp/myfile.tar.Z /tmp/myfile.store"

The store takes care of all the MPE specifics (file attributes etc)
and the tar brings me to the world of pure bytestream and also does
compress via the handy z option. Unpacking is the reverse steps...

  :xeq /bin/tar "xvzof /tmp/myfile.tar.Z"
  :file myfile=/tmp/myfile.store; dev=disc
  :restore *myfile; @[log in to unmask]; create; keep; olddate; show

Sometimes I even use myfile.taz or just myfile as the filename to
be moved across the net (via mail, ftp or http) as it helps to avoid
the issue that Windows sometimes prefers to change the first dot to
an underscore (eg when doing save-link-as in a web browser).

Using the /tmp/something filename tends to help with the HFS vs MPE
file naming issue (as the leading slash forces POSIX interpretation
during the file transfer to the 3000 side, whereas a myfile.taz has
a risk that .taz is taken as an [non-existent] MPE group...)

Just EUR 0.02 from Germany.

:) Lars.