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ASCll mode data connection and preferred encoding problem (12 posts)

  • Started 13 years ago by Peter
  • Latest reply 13 years ago from Scott McGuire
  • Peter Member

    I'm a web designer. My client took it upon himself to upload photos of his triplets on to the server for his family in France to view. Now his website only show some pages and there are missing files. Non of the website files are viewable via fetch.

    I can't upload or move files off the root directory, when I try I get this message:

    Fetch could not get the file list because some of the characters could not be converted to your preferred encoding.
    Try to avoid using characters that can not be represented in your preferred encoding.

    Server responded: "Opening ASCll mode data connection for file list"

    Can anyone help?
    Thanks

    Posted 13 years ago #

  • Scott McGuire Administrator

    Hi Peter,

    It sounds like perhaps your client has uploaded files whose name include Unicode characters, or other characters that can't be displayed by the character encoding Fetch uses by default; so you need to change the encoding setting Fetch is using.

    Here's what to try:

    * Go to the Fetch menu, and choose Preferences.
    * Click the Miscellaneous tab.
    * Look at the "Preferred encoding" setting; what is its current setting? Make a note of it, because you'll want to return to this setting later.
    * Try changing the setting to "Unicode (UTF-8)"
    * Connect to the server and folder with the problem files. Does Fetch display the file list without a problem?

    If yes, make the changes you need to make with this server, and then once you're done, you'll want to change the "Preferred encoding" preference back to its original setting, or you'll probably get the "could not be converted to your preferred encoding" error when you try to work with other FTP servers.

    If switching to the Unicode encoding doesn't help, you probably need to use one of the other encoding settings. It's hard to say which one; I'd try the various "Western" ones first.

    For more information about the preferred encoding setting, please see the character encoding and translation help topic.

    And please let us know if you have further questions or problems.

    Thanks,

    Scott McGuire
    Fetch Softworks

    Posted 13 years ago #

  • Peter Member

    Thank you so much for your response.
    The Fetch preferred encoding was already Unicode UTF-8
    I changed it under preferences and miscellaneous to Western Mac OS Roman
    and the files appeared.

    I uploaded new versions of about 8 pages that were messed up and they are fine now.
    So now I'll change my Fetch preferences back to UTF -8 for other sites?

    I'm pretty sure that's right.

    Thank You again!
    Peter Weiss

    Posted 13 years ago #

  • Scott McGuire Administrator

    Hi Peter,

    You're welcome, and I'm glad that helped.

    Yes, if Unicode UTF-8 is what's been working for you without a problem up to this point, that's what you should change it back to.

    Thanks,

    Scott McGuire
    Fetch Softworks

    Posted 13 years ago #

  • Peter Member

    I love Fetch!
    been using it for years.
    Great program.
    Peter

    Posted 13 years ago #

  • Scott McGuire Administrator

    Hi Peter,

    Thanks for the kind words, and for being a longtime Fetch user!

    Best,

    Scott McGuire
    Fetch Softworks

    Posted 13 years ago #

  • Metaprinter Member

    So what should the preferred encoding be? I find my self toggling between utf-8 and western when editing files via Textwrangler. Should i be looking at the charset of the file i'm modifying?

    Posted 13 years ago #

  • Scott McGuire Administrator

    Hi metaprinter,

    We'd like some more information in order to give the best answer.

    Which versions of Fetch and Textwrangler are you using?

    Do your files always specify their encoding with a BOM or an HTML meta tag?

    We (and BareBones) have made changes over time to how the Edit command handles encodings, so the answer we give depends on the answer to these questions.

    Thanks,

    Scott McGuire
    Fetch Softworks

    Posted 13 years ago #

  • Metaprinter Member

    mac osx
    version 10.5.8

    TextWrangler
    a product of Bare Bones Software, Inc.
    version 3.1 (2640) of Tue, 19 Jan 2010

    Fetch for Mac osx
    Version 5.5.3

    ... it never used to never give me a warning after editing a file, but starting some time earlier this year it has, only when editing html files.

    Posted 13 years ago #

  • Scott McGuire Administrator

    Hi,

    I would recommend updating to Fetch 5.6, which would be a free update for you (since you're already a Fetch 5.5 user).

    One of the changes in Fetch 5.6 is that when you use the Edit command with TextWrangler 3.0 or later (or BBEdit 9.2 or later), if your file already specifies its encoding with a BOM or an HTML meta tag, TextWrangler will detect that and use the encoding specified by the file regardless of Fetch's Preferred encoding setting.

    So as long as your files specify their encoding, then you can leave the Preferred encoding setting to the one that is correct for displaying your file list in Fetch (whichever one doesn't give you an error), and the Edit command together with TextWrangler will detect the correct encoding for your files, so you won't need to change the Preferred encoding setting just to get the correct results when editing.

    Please give that a try, and let us know if it doesn't do what you expect, or if you still have questions or problems.

    Thanks,

    Scott McGuire
    Fetch Softworks

    Posted 13 years ago #

  • Metaprinter Member

    Update complete. So far so Good. - Thanks, you guys are Great!

    Posted 13 years ago #

  • Scott McGuire Administrator

    Hi Metaprinter,

    You're welcome, and thanks!

    Please let us know if have further questions.

    Scott McGuire
    Fetch Softworks

    Posted 13 years ago #

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