Re: Suggestion: use of symbolic links in the FTP site

From: Tom Emerson (tree@basistech.com)
Date: Wed Apr 21 2004 - 15:34:12 EDT

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    Philippe Verdy writes:
    > Symbolic links is a bad idea on FTP. They are resolved by the client...

    Really? Depends on your server: proftpd handles them fine.

    > I think it would also give the false feeling that a new 4.01 file
    > exist when in fact it's the same as 4.00.

    No, the filename of the link would match that of the file in the 4.00
    directory. The link only provides you with a way to access the
    datafile. I would not recommend renaming the link to 4.01 if it didn't change.

    > I better suggest listing files with a simple parsable fiel which
    > lists all files that are part of a Unicode version, with their
    > respective version.

    The problem here is that you cannot easily grab all the files for a
    given release without first downloading that file and parsing the
    information out and constructing pathnames.

    But as I was told out-of-band, the point of the web site is not to
    have frequent downloading of the datafiles.

    [...]
    > Saying that these files in 4.0-Update1 take their content from the
    > 4.0 release. There's no need to duplicate files, and no link to

    I'm not suggesting that anything gets duplicated.

    > create. It documents the set of files that make up a complete
    > Unicode version. Then with the listed versions for each file, it's
    > easy to get the appropriate filename in the appropriate folder...

    Assuming the naming conventions remain stable.

    > I suggested this a couple of days ago, and even sugegsted adding
    > some properties to differentiate the status of these files in the
    > current version: informative or normative; core or derived according
    > to the current version rules.
    [...]
    > informative at some version may become normative later, or because
    > some files which are currently derived from rules, may become basic
    > as the rules to generate them become too complex and infering some
    > properties will become too much errorprone (in that case a derived
    > file becomes a core file)

    This kind of suggestion should be submitted to the UTC through the
    form at <http://www.unicode.org/reporting.html>.

        -tree

    -- 
    Tom Emerson                                          Basis Technology Corp.
    Software Architect                                 http://www.basistech.com
      "Beware the lollipop of mediocrity: lick it once and you suck forever"
    


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