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Fetch Doing Character Code Conversion!!?? (5 posts)

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  • Started 21 years ago by jdq
  • Latest reply 21 years ago from zonetuke
  • jdq Member

    Funny thing, my developer and I just had a big argument the other day -- he was bragging about "transmit" ftp, said he thought the truck was "cute". I told him the dog was far cuter... and that the dog runs and the truck should also do a little cruise but it doesn't.

    Now I think I want to run over the dog with the transit's truck. We just spent hours, over a day in fact, trying to figure out why our flash 5 program seemed to be displaying the 8859-1 (Western) encoded .txt files I was putting on the server as if they had been wrongly undergone a MacRoman to 8859-1 conversion that they didn't need? And displaying MacRoman correctly when Flash 5 shouldn't do that! I had never heard of Flash deciding to do character encoding conversions but that's what seemed to be happening.

    Finally I went over to my PC and FTP'd an identical iso-8859-1 file from there -- everything worked as it should, it displayed properly in my Flash program... then when I brought that file down via Fetch to the Mac it seemed like it wasn't 8859-1 any more.

    After much head scratching I changed "Mode" from "Automatic" to Binary and Format from "Automatic" to "Raw Data". After this my 8859-1 encoded text file went up from my Mac and seemed to maintain it's character encoding just fine, unmolested. And everything worked as it should have -- the Flash 5 movie retrieved the file and it displayed correctly, as it should have.

    What is the deal here? Does fetch assume that just because you are sending a text file from a Mac that it is MacRoman and therefore it will do you the favor of converting it to 8859-1, somehow assuming that's the way you want it on the server? The funny thing is I can't find anything anywhere on the net or this site about Fetch doing character conversions automatically... but maybe I am just missing something. Is that happening? is that normal?

    What are the proper settings for uploading 8859-1 (or say utf-8, or whatever) files that are txt text files but you don't want the character encoding messed with along the way?

    Is it not Fetch but something about OS 10.2 that is making this happen? Is there anything wrong about sending .txt files as "binary raw data"?

    Has this never come up before??!!??!!

    I appreciate your attention.

    John

    Posted 21 years ago #

  • Jim Matthews Administrator

    Translating text files and file names between MacRoman and ISO-8859-1 is an option. You can turn it off by unchecking "Translate ISO Characters" in the Misc section of Preferences. A search through Fetch Help for "translate", "character code" or "8859" will pull up the documentation.

    I apologize for the frustration this caused,

    Jim Matthews
    Fetch Softworks

    Posted 21 years ago #

  • jdq Member

    Jim,

    Thanks for the prompt reply.

    I know we aren't always predictable, but let me tell you how this human behaved.

    I searched on "encoding" and "8859-1". When I looked in the help section (Window>>Fetch Help) I looked under "Automatic, Text, Binary" and especially looked at "automatic" and "text", where there is no mention of this.

    In the preferences I kept looling under "upload" and "download", I never thought to think of "misc".

    I think that if you think about it, messing with the file -- actually changing it-- should not be a default action, especially with no warning. Who would expect that?

    My suggestion is that if you keep this as default, the action accompany a pop-up warning -- "Fetch will do a character code conversion on your text file, converting it to the more universal standard of iso... if your file is not macRoman or you do not want this action... go to Fetch preferences, Misc... o Not Show This Warning Again"

    Thanks again for the personal attention.

    John

    Posted 21 years ago #

  • Jim Matthews Administrator

    Thanks for the feedback -- I'll think about it.

    Jim Matthews
    Fetch Softworks

    Posted 21 years ago #

  • zonetuke Member

    Jim,

    FYI you may want to see this thread.

    http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?p=421919#421919

    Posted 21 years ago #

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