Re: FTP in the Finder
Re: FTP in the Finder
- Subject: Re: FTP in the Finder
- From: Eric Gundrum <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 28 Mar 2002 08:44:02 -0800
--- At 9:17 AM -0800 3/27/02, Michael Swan wrote:
>
There was a product long ago that used FTP as the foregoing email
>
indicates. It was called Snatcher and was from Software
>
Ventures. This company is long gone. Here's a review from 1995:
>
http://www.macworld.com/1995/08/reviews/1107.html
>
I wonder if someone associated with Software Ventures would be
>
willing to open-source this product?
Snatcher was written by Michael Rutman with lots of user experience help
from the rest of the SVC team. Michael and I had many arguments about
exactly the issue we are discussing. We all wanted a Finder-based FTP
client. Michael always answered my suggestions with "FTP is not a file
system."
Snatcher's implementation was much more like Anarchy. It was a separate
application. However, Michael put a lot of engineering into making the
Snatcher GUI look exactly like the System 7 Finder (including window
drawing bugs). I think he was successful with the GUI, but it still had the
context switch. He spent more than 50% engineering time on that GUI.
I still argue that it does not matter that FTP is not a file system. I have
not analyzed this closely, but I never heard a complete argument, either. I
think a Foreign File System Plugin (or whatever OSX calls it) can be
implemented for FTP. The argument against has always been "but FTP does not
support such-and-such calls". (Fill in "range locking" and a variety of
other little used and barely supported file system calls.) The reality is
that most users don't need the stuff that would be hard to do; they just
want to use the Finder to access FTP services. If such a plugin implemented
just enough to work in the Finder, most users would be very happy with this.
One item which makes me think this problem is more difficult than I imagine
is that Stairways has not yet done it. Many of us had discussed this
problem over beer at long ago WWDC Hilton Wind Down Sessions. Maybe
Stairways doesn't quite get it and thinks they have to do all or nothing;
that would surprise me. More likely it is just more difficult than we can
see without actually studying the problem.
--eric
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