Network Working Group                                         J. Klensin
Internet-Draft                                            March 30, 2012
Updates: 959 (if approved)
Intended status: Standards Track
Expires: October 1, 2012


             FTP TYPE Extension for Internationalized Text
                     draft-klensin-ftpext-typeu-00

Abstract

   The traditional FTP protocol includes a TYPE command to specify the
   data representation.  That command has values for ASCII and EBCDIC
   text, plus binary ("IMAGE") transmission.  As the Internet becomes
   more international, there is a growing requirement to be able to
   transmit textual data, encoded in Unicode, in a way that is
   independent of the coding and line representation forms of particular
   operating systems.  This memo specifies a new FTP representation TYPE
   value for Unicode data.

Status of this Memo

   This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
   provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
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   material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."

   This Internet-Draft will expire on October 1, 2012.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2012 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
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   (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
   publication of this document.  Please review these documents
   carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect



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   to this document.  Code Components extracted from this document must
   include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
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   This document may contain material from IETF Documents or IETF
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   it for publication as an RFC or to translate it into languages other
   than English.



































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Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
     1.1.  Context and Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
     1.2.  Summary of History of Internationalization of FTP  . . . .  4
     1.3.  History of the TYPE Command  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
     1.4.  Terminology  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
     1.5.  Discussion List  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
   2.  Specification  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
     2.1.  Existing TYPEs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
     2.2.  Unicode TYPE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
     2.3.  Data Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
     2.4.  Feature Negotiation  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
   3.  Net-Unicode Format for FTP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8
   4.  Acknowledgments  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8
   5.  IANA Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8
   6.  Security Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8
   7.  References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
     7.1.  Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
     7.2.  Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
   Appendix A.  Change Log  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
     A.1.  New Version and File Name: draft-ietf-ftpext2-typeu-00 . . 10
     A.2.  Version -01  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
     A.3.  Version -02  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
     A.4.  Version -03  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
     A.5.  New Version and File Name:
           draft-klensin-ftpext-typeu-00  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
   Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11























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1.  Introduction

1.1.  Context and Overview

   The traditional FTP protocol, as documented in RFC 959 [RFC0959],
   includes a TYPE command to specify the data representation.  That
   command was originally specified as having values for ASCII and
   EBCDIC text, plus binary ("IMAGE") transmission.  The Host
   Requirements specification [RFC1123] made other changes to FTP, but
   did not alter the TYPE command or the environment for which it
   provided.

   As the Internet becomes more international, there is a growing
   requirement to be able to transmit textual data, encoded in Unicode
   [Unicode], in a way that is independent of the coding and line
   representation forms of particular operating systems.  This memo
   specifies a new FTP TYPE value for Unicode data.

1.2.  Summary of History of Internationalization of FTP

   RFC 2640 [RFC2640] is described as providing internationalization of
   FTP, but only addresses the use of FTP in internationalized (non-
   ASCII or extended ASCII [ASCII]) file systems.  Its facilities were
   slightly enhanced in a more general extensions specification
   [RFC3659], which builds on a more general FTP extension mechanism
   [RFC2389].  The specification in this document addresses the transfer
   of non-ASCII text files only, building on the TYPE command of the
   original FTP specification [RFC0959].

1.3.  History of the TYPE Command

   [[Note in Draft: AppsAWG: please decide whether this subsection
   should be included in the final version as informative or dropped as
   surplus text that doesn't contribute to an implementer understanding
   of what should be done.]]

   When the FTP protocol was first defined in 1971 [RFC0114], hosts on
   the ARPANET were extremely diverse.  ASCII and EBCDIC were both in
   active use, as were several completely different character encodings,
   and ASCII was encoded in a variety of different forms inside
   different systems (TENEX/TOPS-20, Multics, Unix on 16 and then 32 bit
   architectures, and the original IBM ASCII all used different
   encodings.  In mid-1972, the late John McCarthy described some
   aspects of the issues [RFC0373].  Within a relatively short period of
   time, it was understood that expecting every system to adapt to the
   formats of every other system -- a fairly large n-squared problem --
   was crazy.  At least for text, the solution was to expect all FTP-
   supporting hosts to convert between their local formats and a



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   network-standard ASCII encoding and, optionally, to also identify,
   and permit, EBCBIC files to be transferred in canonical form.  The
   TYPE command was incorporated into FTP to support client
   specification of those forms for on-the-wire transfer and also to
   support a pair of TYPEs to support transferring data in forms that
   were likely to be operating system and hardware specific (see
   Section 2.1 for more details).

   Because of the need to handle these different text character sets and
   encoding forms without that n-squared problem, TYPE was very commonly
   used unless it was known that the sending and receiving systems were
   homogeneous.  Several arrangements for single-line FTP commands did
   not make explicit provision for TYPE specifications, but they tended
   to make exactly that homogeneity assumption.

   By the late 1980s, the ARPANET was converging toward a single basic
   host system architecture.  Almost all significant computer systems
   used 32 bit architectures or felt an obligation to be able to
   simulate them.  EBCDIC had fallen into disuse on the network.  ASCII,
   encoded right-justified in eight bits with a leading zero, had become
   pervasive.  An Image transfer among diverse systems might well
   encounter differences with line termination or, occasionally, record
   structures rather than stream ones (both of which TYPE A would have
   smoothed out), but the character encodings were almost certain to be
   the same.  So, with allowances for those line termination problems --
   which have been a large issue in many cases -- Image ("binary") and
   ASCII transfers were almost equivalent and the TYPE command became
   less-used.  Some client FTP implementations also adopted an
   "automatic" mode in which they tried to determine heuristically,
   based on either file names or content inspection, whether the
   relevant file consisted of ASCII characters or binary information and
   to send the appropriate TYPE command without user intervention.
   Because there were usually only two choices in practice, they often
   (but not always) got it right.

   However, migration to Unicode has reintroduced many of the old
   issues.  When Unicode is used inside a system, it can be used with
   several different encodings (e.g., UTF-8 and several variations on
   UTF-16 (possibly with surrogate pairs), different assumptions about
   normalization (see "Terminology for Use in Internationalization"
   [i18n-terms] for more discussion) and even new variations on line
   termination conventions.  When those files are transferred to another
   system with Image type, the result may be completely uninterpretable
   on the target system.  This specification extends to non-ASCII
   character transfers the early concept of having a very small number
   of common/ canonical network transfer formats for characters, having
   systems able to convert to or from them.  By doing so, it avoids a
   Unicode version of the n-squared problems and the general confusion



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   that led to the definition of TYPE.

1.4.  Terminology

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
   document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].

   This document assumes that the reader is familiar with the
   terminology of RFC 959.  Those terms, especially reply, server-FTP
   process, user-FTP process, server-PI, user-PI, logical byte size, and
   user, if used here, are used in the same way.  For the convenience of
   contemporary readers, the terms "client" and "server" are used
   interchangeably with the historic terms "user-FTP process" and
   "server-FTP process".  The document also assumes the termology and
   changes in the updates to FTP specified in RFC 1123 and RFC 2389
   [RFC2389].

1.5.  Discussion List

   [[anchor5: RFC Editor: please remove this section before
   publication.]]

   This proposal is being discussed on the IETF FTP Extensions mailing
   list at ftpext@ietf.org.  Subscription and other information is
   available from https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ftpext.


2.  Specification

2.1.  Existing TYPEs

   The FTP TYPE command, described in [RFC0959] accepts four possible
   first argument values, as described below.  Note that the
   descriptions in this subsection are provided for the reader's
   convenience; the definitions in RFC 959 remain normative.

   A  The data are expected to be in, and are transformed by the server
      if needed to, an ASCII [ASCII] data stream conforming to the "NVT"
      specification (See RFC 959 [RFC0959] and Appendix B of RFC 5198
      [RFC5198] for more information).

   E  The data are expected to be in, and are transformed by the server
      if needed to, an EBCDIC data stream as specified in RFC 959.







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   I  The data are transferred in "image" form, i.e., exactly as they
      appear in the server.  Because it is the only TYPE form in which
      true binary data can be transferred, TYPE I is often referred to
      as "binary" or "binary transfer".

   L  The data are transmitted in logical bytes of a size specified in
      an additional argument.  See RFC 959.

   Any of these four argument variations to TYPE except "TYPE A" (with
   non-print format) MAY be rejected by the server-FTP process with a
   504 response code if it does not support that type and the necessary
   conversions.

2.2.  Unicode TYPE

   The client-PI MAY transmit TYPE U to the server-PI as an alternative
   to other TYPE commands and arguments.  If it does, the server MAY
   return reply-code 504, indicating that the TYPE U feature is not
   supported (unchanged from RFC 959) or MUST respond to any data
   retrieval request (e.g., RETR) by sending the data in a stream
   conformant to the Net-Unicode format specified in Section 3.
   Similarly, if the client-PI sends TYPE U and the server accepts it,
   the client MUST send any data streams in that format while the option
   is in effect.  No second parameter is used or permitted for TYPE U.

2.3.  Data Structure

   The default and only permitted data structure for TYPE U is "file
   structure".  Use of the STRU command SHOULD be avoided.  If is used,
   its argument MUST be "F".

2.4.  Feature Negotiation

   RFC 2389 [RFC2389] specifies a feature negotiation mechanism for new
   extensions to FTP.  Since the TYPE command is a required part of the
   base FTP specification, the client-PI is not required to issue the
   FEAT command prior to issuing TYPE U. However, it MAY do so and
   Server-FTP implementations that include TYPE U SHOULD support FEAT as
   described below.  If the FEAT command is transmitted from the
   client-PI to the server-PI, and this extension and FEAT are
   supported, the response MUST include a TYPE line that lists all TYPE
   values supported by the server (including the required ones).  For
   example, if an FTP-server supports all of TYPEs A, E, I, and U, the
   FEAT response line would contain each of the possible arguments
   separated by semicolons, e.g.,






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      TYPE A;E;I;U

   This specification does not change either RFC 959 or RFC 2389.  In
   particular, no FEAT response line is required for TYPE unless this,
   or some other, extension to TYPE is supported by the FTP-server.


3.  Net-Unicode Format for FTP

   This section specifies a profile of Net-Unicode [RFC5198] for use
   with FTP TYPE U.

   Unicode characters must be transmitted in UTF-8 [RFC3629] as
   specified for Net-Unicode.  Because FTP is used in data transmission,
   the characters and sequences that are discouraged in Section 2 of RFC
   5198 are permitted to be transported by FTP.  However, line-ending
   sequences MUST conform to the CRLF convention specified there.
   Consistent with Paragraph 4 of that Section, strings SHOULD be
   normalized before transmission if at all possible.

   The implicit logical byte size for this transmission type is eight
   bits.


4.  Acknowledgments

   This document draws heavily on RFC 959; appreciation is expressed to
   its authors and to the authors of RFC 2398.  The work of Mark P.
   Peterson and Douglas J. Papenthien on other FTP extensions finally
   motivated production of this document in 2008 after a long delay;
   that contribution is appreciated as well.  Specific useful comments
   on this draft or its immediate predecessors were provided by the late
   and much-lamented Mike Padlipsky and by Mykyta Yevstifeyev.


5.  IANA Considerations

   When this specification is approved, IANA is requested to add an
   additional table to the FTP Extensions Registry established by RFC
   5797 [RFC5797].  That table should be titled "TYPE command arguments"
   and should include "A (m) RFC 959", "E (o) RFC 959", "I (o) RFC 959",
   "L (o) RFC 959", and "U (o) RFCNNNN".


6.  Security Considerations

   This specification makes no substantive change to the FTP command
   stream (the argument to the standard TYPE command is changed).  It



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   only alters the presentation of data in the data stream.
   Consequently, it should have no negative security implications that
   are not already present in the earlier FTP specifications described
   in Section 1 and in the Net-Unicode specification [RFC5198].  By
   specifying an exact canonical form for the identification and
   transfer of Unicode strings, it may eliminate some problems that
   might be encountered when such strings are transmitted without
   identification or without restrictions (e.g., using TYPE I to obtain
   a "binary" transfer).


7.  References

7.1.  Normative References

   [ASCII]    American National Standards Institute (formerly United
              States of America Standards Institute), "USA Code for
              Information Interchange", ANSI X3.4-1968, 1968.

              ANSI X3.4-1968 has been replaced by newer versions with
              slight modifications, but the 1968 version remains
              definitive for the Internet.

   [RFC0959]  Postel, J. and J. Reynolds, "File Transfer Protocol",
              STD 9, RFC 959, October 1985.

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.

   [RFC2389]  Hethmon, P. and R. Elz, "Feature negotiation mechanism for
              the File Transfer Protocol", RFC 2389, August 1998.

   [RFC3629]  Yergeau, F., "UTF-8, a transformation format of ISO
              10646", STD 63, RFC 3629, November 2003.

   [RFC5198]  Klensin, J. and M. Padlipsky, "Unicode Format for Network
              Interchange", RFC 5198, March 2008.

   [Unicode]  The Unicode Consortium.  The Unicode Standard, Version
              6.0.0, defined by:, "The Unicode Standard, Version 6.0.0",
              (Mountain View, CA: The Unicode Consortium, 2011. ISBN
              978-1-936213-01-6).,
              <http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode6.0.0/>.

7.2.  Informative References

   [RFC0114]  Bhushan, A., "File Transfer Protocol", RFC 114,
              April 1971.



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   [RFC0373]  McCarthy, J., "Arbitrary Character Sets", RFC 373,
              July 1972.

   [RFC1123]  Braden, R., "Requirements for Internet Hosts - Application
              and Support", STD 3, RFC 1123, October 1989.

   [RFC2640]  Curtin, B., "Internationalization of the File Transfer
              Protocol", RFC 2640, July 1999.

   [RFC3659]  Hethmon, P., "Extensions to FTP", RFC 3659, March 2007.

   [RFC5797]  Klensin, J. and A. Hoenes, "FTP Command and Extension
              Registry", RFC 5797, March 2010.

   [i18n-terms]
              Hoffman, P. and J. Klensin, "Terminology Used in
              Internationalization in the IETF", June 2011, <https://
              datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-appsawg-rfc3536bis/>.


Appendix A.  Change Log

   [[anchor13: RFC Editor: Please remove this section]]

A.1.  New Version and File Name: draft-ietf-ftpext2-typeu-00

   This version of the document is a slight update to
   draft-klensin-ftp-typeu-00, posted in July 2008).  It includes some
   updated references to work completed in the interim, information
   about the FTPEXT2 WG, a new Security Considerations section (omitted
   from the prior draft), and a few other minor corrections.

A.2.  Version -01

   o  Corrected a typographical error in the -00 change log entry and
      made a cosmetic change to that section.

   o  Added additional metadata.

   o  Added a new introductory subsection (Section 1.3) to clarify the
      relationship of this spec to FTP's development and some other
      ongoing discussions in the IETF.

A.3.  Version -02

   o  Changed title per suggestion from Mykyta Yevstifeyev





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   o  Removed reference to ABNF since it turned out to be possible to
      write the document without it.

   o  Rewrote the IANA Considerations to specify a table for TYPE
      argument values.

   o  Made a number of other relatively minor corrections and
      clarifications.

   o  Updated Unicode reference to 6.0.

   o  Moved this section to an appendix for easier handling later.

A.4.  Version -03

   o  Draft reissued to reactivate it.

   o  Many small editorial changes and clarifications with no
      substantive change to the specification itself.

A.5.  New Version and File Name: draft-klensin-ftpext-typeu-00

   This version of the document is identical, except for the date, file
   name and updated mailing list information, to
   draft-ietf-ftpext2-typeu-03, posted on 12 July 2012.  This return the
   draft to individual submission status after the shutdown of the
   FTPEXT2 WG.


Author's Address

   John C Klensin
   1770 Massachusetts Ave, Ste 322
   Cambridge, MA  02140
   USA

   Phone: +1 617 245 1457
   Email: john+ietf@jck.com













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