FTP links
 

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned problems with FTP links, either in the release notes or this forum. I've been having consistent problems with them for the last several Sneaky Peeks.

When I try to click on an FTP link like this one:

[url]ftp://sources.redhat.com/pub/docbook-tools/[/url]

I used to get a directory listing in OW 5.1. In OW 5.5, I instead see TextMate open up a new blank document.

Is anyone else seeing a similar problem?

I can confirm this.

If I use Transmit to set the "default FTP client" to something other than "Omniweb":

-- set it to "Transmit", the link opens Transmit and connects to the directory

-- set it to "Camino", and open the link using Camino, it opens the directory in the Camino window

What you describe sounds like the expected behavior to me. I don't see how it relates to the issue I reported.

[I replied to this earlier, and my post showed up, but now it seems to have completely disappeared. ???]

I also have observed problems with FTP links. I haven't had time to figure out what's actually happening in detail, though. When I click the above link, OW just "downloads" a 0-byte file whose name is that of the directory - I recall this happening consistently with FTP links.

Of note, I have Interarchy set to handle FTP links. When I follow the link in Safari, the task is simply handed off to Interarchy, as expected. Perhaps OW is simply getting confused when having to hand off the links? How do you have your FTP handler configured?

Perhaps OW should not automatically assign itself to be the default FTP protocol handler if it does not handle that protocol? I now set the default FTP client (in Transmit prefs) to Transmit, and all is well.

I can't test this now, as I'm not at home and only have a Windows box here. But:

What I read above looks to me as if OW won't open a persistent ftp connection where you could browse a dir and then select a file to download, but will instead try to download the linked file at once. Which won't bring good results for a dir, of course. :-)

That would mean that it should work with complete links where file to be downloaded is already part of link, not only the dir where it is to be found. Can anyone confirm this?

[QUOTE=Bob Williams]When I click the above link, OW just "downloads" a 0-byte file whose name is that of the directory - I recall this happening consistently with FTP links.[/quote]

Yes, that's exactly what's happening to me!

[QUOTE=Bob Williams]How do you have your FTP handler configured?[/QUOTE]

I don't know. How does one configure the FTP handler?

[QUOTE=zottel]That would mean that it should work with complete links where file to be downloaded is already part of link, not only the dir where it is to be found. Can anyone confirm this?[/QUOTE]

I think so. Here's what I'm seeing:

[url]ftp://sources.redhat.com/pub/docbook-tools/[/url]
Downloads a zero-byte file called "docbook-tools" and opens it in TextMate.

[url]ftp://sources.redhat.com/pub/docbook-tools/README[/url]
Downloads the file README and opens it in TextMate.

So I guess the latter is the expected behavior, but the former certainly isn't.

I should mention that this is a known issue, and will be mentioned in the release notes as such with the next release.

I dunno if it's worth adding since you guys already know about it, but according to Little Snitch, the zero-byte 'docbook-tools' file is downloaded without connecting to the server, while the README actually does connect.