ASCII-Binary

talk random
1

Hey guys i am setting up a movable type blog on my site (www.movabletype.org) and in the install instructions it says that i need to upload a few groups of files in ASCII mode and another in Binary, whats the difference? i dont really understand.

and one other thing, can i use folders inside of my static folder? So like i have a /mt-static/images?

thanks

2

when you transfer using ASCII mode, the server you are sending it to will try to change it so that it could read it. a text file on your PC may read differently on a Unix machine so it will try to make it readable. Now with binary transfers, the file is copied AS IS.

my guess is that they want you to transfer txts, htmls, css, etc in ASCII mode and images and other non-plain text files (gifs, jpgs, mp3s, etc) in binary.

3

so could i just FTP as normal? cuase thats what i always do with both types…

4

ASCII is primarily for text files and binary is used for graphics, executable programs, and other non-text files. If it’s combination of both text and graphics then binary is used.

5

well it’s always better to use Auto if you can. i know ws_ftp can. files may come out bad if you don’t send it the right way.

6

binary is an executable. SO if you transfer an executable by ASCII , it wont work (or thats the idea) … So for some files that are transfering to the UNIX/Linux machines need to be in binary when its transfered in FTP… most times the ftp’s can auto detect it… etc… just read the instructions, and that’ll tell you which ones to transfer in binary form.

7

thanks guys, second day, time to try to set it up agian, or finish it

8

If it doesn’t work, try http://www.cafelog.com/ , just testing this here: http://eyezberg.maxsyncron.de/blog/ …

9

Yup - and anyhoway - most of the type your ftp progs are able to transfer using the right type ASCII or Binary - I guess cuteFTP does the job, I’m using LeechFTP and it has automatic transfer (although you can choose to upload files in Bin. Or ASCII)