Question: How do I transfer ASCII art via FTP?

Hiya!!  I'm -really- new to Usenet groups.. and, I was wondering..

I downloaded a few files from FTP, and I wasn't sure if I should
download them using Binary or ASCII (they were ASCII pics..), so
I tried both.  All the files are garbled.  I don't know if I'm doing
something wrong, or what.. and I realllllly hope you guys don't get
angry for me posting this here.. I figured since it was ASCII pictures
I was downloading, I could/should ask here...  Thanks in advance
for any/all help you can give!  Please feel free to send e-mail.

Thanks again -

Kathleen

In article <37vmo4$mn...@sashimi.wwa.com>, MsK...@ix.netcom.com (Kathleen
Patterson) writes:

What a great question...I also would like to know the answer
Lar...@aol.com

>Kathleen Patterson queried:
>
> How do I transfer ascii art using ftp ?

Well here it is folks. A absolute brain dead moron's guide to ftp. This is real
step by step stuff and anyone that can move their hands and read will be able
to ftp with the greatest of ease. Even after 20 pints of lager, a chicken 
vindaloo and a good throwing up you will be able to read these instructions and
use them.

So here we go.

I am going to transfer a file called "picture" to my university and the 
alt.ascii-art 'Frequently Asked Questions' (FAQ) file.

Step 1.
-------
If sending stuff then make sure the file exists and is in your directory. 

To do this use the ls command, just type :

| ls <return>

On a unix machine I get the following appear :

| News        addresses        art
| dev         in               picture

I can see that picture is in the directory so I get excited, the pulse races
and I'm ready to attack the internet with some lethal ftp.

If however I'm just going to receive stuff I don't care a fig and progress to
step number 2 thinking 'Wow that was easy!'

Step 2.
-------
Decide where you want the file is going to be transferred to and obtain the 
other machine's internet address.

Obviously you must know the address of where you are transferring. In my
case it is going to be my account at csd.uwe.ac.uk (if it was a friend then you
use the same address as his email, ie gre...@uni.erlangen.edu will have
as his address uni.erlangen.edu ) You may have seen addresses for ascii art
sites for example the Scarecrow (The guy that has a huge collection of ascii 
art) is at ftp.wwa.com 

so I use ftp <address> in our case this is:

| ftp csd.uwe.ac.uk

Which will give me the following output :

| Connected to csd.uwe.ac.uk.
| 220 csd FTP server (SunOS 4.1) ready.
| Name (csd.uwe.ac.uk:pa-ross): 

If I had of wanted to connect to scarecrow then I would use :

| ftp ftp.wwa.com

Now comes the tricky part. I have to remember my name! Seriously if you are 
using a site which allows anyone to ftp then you should use the name 
'anonymous'. However this is my own account so I use the name pa-ross

so I type in pa-ross which gets me :

| Name (csd.uwe.ac.uk:pa-ross): pa-ross
| 331 Password required for pa-ross.
| Password: ..........
| 230 User pa-ross logged in.
| ftp> 

NB If I was using anonymous I would probably get something like :

| Name (garbo.uwasa.fi:pa-ross): anonymous
| 331 Guest login ok, send your complete e-mail address as password.

NB I now use my email address as a password. 

| Password: pa-...@csd.uwe.ac.uk
|
| 230-> Welcoming user from gate.uwe.ac.uk to Garbo archives.
| 230-> There are currently 15 users connected to our archives (max 70)
| 230-> The local time is Sun Dec 18 19:50:45 1994
| 230->
[rest deleted]

Bingo we are now connected (How simple!)

Step 3.
-------
Set up correct mode of operation.

This is easy. Just use the commands binary and hash. Binary means that ftp
moves binary files (Not really necessary with ASCII but good move just in case)
Hash makes little '#' appear every time 1024 characters are transferred. This 
is good to have because you will always know that something is happening.

So I type :

| ftp> binary

and get something like :

| 200 Type set to I.

next I type hash and get :

| ftp> hash
| Hash mark printing on (1024 bytes/hash mark).

Step 4.
-------
Change to required directory.

We are now connected and the other machine which will act just like any other 
unix based machine. You can ls, cd until you find the file you want, or the 
place where you want to transfer a file to.

If you are getting stuff from scarecrow site then type. cd <path_name> NB 
Everytime you type cd and go into another directory you will more than likely 
be given directions as to where to go to next. In my example I want to copy the
file picture to directory art so I type:

| ftp> cd art

and get something like :

| 250 CWD command successful.
| ftp> 

If I was getting something from the scarecrow site, somewhere I was unfamiliar
with I would type 'ls' and get a directory.

| ftp> ls
| 200 PORT command successful.
| 150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for /bin/ls.
| total 12
| -rw-r--r--   1 0  root     305 May 31  1994 .message
| -rw-r--r--   1 0  root     124 May 31  1994 README
| drwxr-xr-x   3 0  root     512 Oct 13 15:32 bin
| drwxr-xr-x   2 0  root     512 Aug 26 21:02 etc
| drwsrwsr-x  15 0  ftp-adm  512 Nov 26 03:48 pub
| -rw-r--r--   1 0  root     987 Aug 27 15:02 wwa.list.9408
| 226 Transfer complete.
| ftp> 

Public stuff is almost always in the pub directory so I change to that
directory and get :

| ftp> cd pub
| 250-This is the beginnings of what we hope will be a significant
| 250-anonymous ftp archive.
| 250-
| 250-If you have any questions or problems, please contact sup...@wwa.com
| 250-
| 250-Greg Gulik
| 250-WorldWide Access Staff
| 250-
| 250 CWD command successful.
| ftp> 

Again I don't know where I am so I do an ls:

| ftp> ls
| 200 PORT command successful.
| 150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for /bin/ls.
| total 38
| -rw-r--r--   1 0     ftp-adm   190 Feb 26  1994 .message
| drwxr-xr-x   9 1552  ftp-adm  1024 Dec  5 16:30 Scarecrow
| drwxr-xr-x   3 0     ftp-adm   512 Nov 16 20:29 archive
| drwxr-sr-t   2 0     ftp-adm   512 Apr 21  1994 bsdi
| drwxr-xr-x   7 0     ftp-adm   512 Dec 11 01:21 ccd
[STUFF DELETED]
| drwxr-sr-t   3 0     ftp-adm   512 Mar 25  1994 unix
| 226 Transfer complete.
| ftp>

I want to change to Scarecrow because that's where all the interesting bits
are. So I use type cd Scarecrow.

| ftp> cd Scarecrow
| 250-:::::::::::::// ::// :://////// :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
| 250-:::::::::://///////// // ://// :::// :::://////////////// :::::::::::::::
| 250-::::::::::::://///// ::/ ::// :::://////////////////// :/ :::::::::::::::
[STUFF DELETED]
| 250-..............
| 250-.___..........
| 250-.\_ \......__.
| 250-...\ \..../ /.
| 250-....\ \/\/ /..
| 250-.....\_/\_/... elcome.  You have entered the Scarecrow's ASCII Art FTP.
| 250-
| 250-   Note: Some files are compressed and encoded.  These are usually large
| 250-files of over 300 K or so.  These files need to be downloaded,
| 250-decoded and decompressed.  Some other files like animations and color
[MORE STUFF DELETED]
| 250-:::-:-  -:-==-=-  =-= =##  =## ######  ##=#= ##=  =#= -==--=  =-=--:--:::
| 250-
| 250 CWD command successful.
| ftp> 

Step 6.
-------
Transfer the files.

Now comes the big moment. We've connected, located the file now we're going
to do some kick ass file transfering and we don't care. To upload (Send) a
file we use put and to download (receive) we use get. So in my example if I'm
sending a file I would use put <file> in the following way :

| ftp> put picture
| 200 PORT command successful.
| 150 Binary data connection for picture (164.11.32.19,2104).
| ####################################
| 226 Binary Transfer complete.
| 59745 bytes sent in 0.2 seconds (2.9e+02 Kbytes/s)
| ftp> 

If I was getting the FAQ from scarecrow I would use 'get FAQ' in the following 
way:

| ftp> get FAQ
| 200 PORT command successful.
| 150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for FAQ (58061 bytes).
| ########################################################
| 226 Transfer complete.
| 58061 bytes received in 10 seconds (5.5 Kbytes/s)
| ftp> 

NB Sometimes transferring can take a long time. If you are using the net at 
it's busiest to transfer 1.5M then you can easily wait for half an hour.


Step 7.
-------
Logout.

Just type 'quit', and wonder why every computer in the world is using such an
americanism and ponder how much nicer it would be if we all used 'exit'

You will get something like :

| ftp> quit
| 221 Goodbye.

And be put back into your own home, loving, stable prompt. After adventuring
out in netscape.

Step 8.
-------
Say Thanks and read the FAQ.

You read the FAQ and learn all sorts of bits and bobs and then you mail me
at pa-...@csd.uwe.ac.uk or pro...@ingress.com and thank me for taking so much
time to write a step by step guide.

If things haven't worked then you mail me and say 'your bloody guide stinks'
I tried it and couldn't get it to work, where upon I reply but all the quotes
were taken from real ftp and so it does work. And then you decide that etc etc


Paul
----

LarryLow (lar...@aol.com) wrote:

: In article <37vmo4$mn...@sashimi.wwa.com>, MsK...@ix.netcom.com (Kathleen
: Patterson) writes:

: What a great question...I also would like to know the answer
: Lar...@aol.com

You might try setting TYPE to ASCII and then you should be able to just 
get it.  Assuming it is not uuencoded or zipped or something odd like 
that you should have no problems.  Other wise you should get it in binary 
mode and then unzip or uudecode it.  Thanks.

kne...@tdkt.mn.org (Jesse A. Knee) wrote:
>
> 
> LarryLow (lar...@aol.com) wrote:
> 
> : In article <37vmo4$mn...@sashimi.wwa.com>, MsK...@ix.netcom.com (Kathleen
> : Patterson) writes:
> 
> : What a great question...I also would like to know the answer
> : Lar...@aol.com
> 
> You might try setting TYPE to ASCII and then you should be able to just 
> get it.  Assuming it is not uuencoded or zipped or something odd like 
> that you should have no problems.  Other wise you should get it in binary 
> mode and then unzip or uudecode it.  Thanks.

.. if you have a www-browser (xmosaic on UN*X, Netscape or NSCA Mosaic on
Windows [I like Netscape much better!!!]) you should enter an URL of the
form <ftp://ftp.destination.server> (e.g. "ftp://ftp.luth.se", where the
second "ftp" is part of the name!). Do it exactly this way "ftp://"...
(no angle brackets!). Once you entered a correct ftp-server which has to
be a so-called "anonymous" ftp-server, the rest is just a matter of point
and click with your favorite pet.

Best,

Paul
pau...@heino.ibh.rwth-aachen.de

(Oh shit, still no .sig)