Html page without any Html tag in its source

[lovecreatesbea...]

I don't see any Html tag in some Html pages, for example, this one:

http://ftp.gnu.org/README

How does it make paragraphs, newlines ... without <P>, <BR> ...
respectively? And how does it present < and > without &lt; and &gt; ?
Does it use some CSS to achieve that?

Thanks

 

[asdf]

I don't see any Html tag in some Html pages, for example, this one:

http://ftp.gnu.org/README

How does it make paragraphs, newlines ... without <P>, <BR> ...
respectively? And how does it present < and > without &lt; and &gt; ?
Does it use some CSS to achieve that?

Thanks

Answer:

It's not an html page. It's a text document on an FTP server.

Newlines are probably the carriage return/line feed character. '<' is an
ascii character, so it's valid text anyway.

No smoke or mirrors, no CSS )

 

[Sherm Pendley]

I don't see any Html tag in some Html pages, for example, this one:

http://ftp.gnu.org/README

That's not an HTML page.

How does it make paragraphs, newlines ... without <P>, <BR> ...
respectively? And how does it present < and > without &lt; and &gt; ?

Same way it's done in any plain text file.

sherm--

 

[lovecreatesbea...]

Answer:

It's not an html page. It's a text document on an FTP server.

Newlines are probably the carriage return/line feed character. '<' is an
ascii character, so it's valid text anyway.

No smoke or mirrors, no CSS )

Thanks asdf and Sherm Pendley.

Does FTP server present any file (including plain text file) same as
WEB server presents Html files? Can it present graph, Forms,
tables ...?

 

[I V]

http://ftp.gnu.org/README

[...]
It's not an html page. It's a text document on an FTP server.

Well, it's a text document on an http server that happens to be called
"ftp".

 

[asdf]

http://ftp.gnu.org/README

[...]
It's not an html page. It's a text document on an FTP server.

Well, it's a text document on an http server that happens to be called
"ftp".

Ok, point taken. You are right, the FTP content is being served via HTTP.
It's a fair assumption that the HTTP server is simply being pointed at their
FTP server, or that the FTP server also serves via HTTP.

 

[I V]

Ok, point taken. You are right, the FTP content is being served via HTTP.
It's a fair assumption that the HTTP server is simply being pointed at their
FTP server, or that the FTP server also serves via HTTP.

Indeed; I just didn't want the OP to get the impression that the effect
she was interested in was caused by the FTP protocol, rather than serving
a plain text document.

 

[Benjamin Niemann]

Thanks asdf and Sherm Pendley.

Does FTP server present any file (including plain text file) same as
WEB server presents Html files? Can it present graph, Forms,
tables ...?

FTP and HTTP work a bit differently.
With HTTP the server sends the file itself plus some metadata including what
kind of file it is (e.g. HTML, plain text, MP3, ...), so the client knows
how to handle it.
FTP only send the data contained in the file without additional metadata.
The client has to figure out what to do with the data, usually by looking
at the filename, the data or asking the user.

If both processes yield the same result (e.g. using the HTML renderer to
display a given document), it does not make a difference, if FTP or HTTP is
used.

 

[Sherm Pendley]

Thanks asdf and Sherm Pendley.

Does FTP server present any file (including plain text file) same as
WEB server presents Html files? Can it present graph, Forms,
tables ...?

Note that the above is not coming from an FTP server; if it were, the URL
would be ftp: instead of http:, which is a web server. The host name (in
the above, ftp.gnu.org) has nothing to do with the protocol that's used.
That's determined by the scheme, which in the above is http:.

What's more, a web server doesn't "present graph, forms, tables"; all it
does is send the appropriate MIME type (text/html, text/plain, image/gif,
etc.) for the file it's serving - it's up to the client to handle each
type however it sees fit.

But to answer your question, no, FTP servers do not send MIME types. Most
of the time it doesn't matter; an FTP client normally just saves the file
to disk anyway, regardless of its type.

sherm--

 

[Sherm Pendley]

Ok, point taken. You are right, the FTP content is being served via HTTP.

There's no such thing as "FTP content". If something is being served via
HTTP, there's no FTP server involved in the transaction at all.

It's a fair assumption that the HTTP server is simply being pointed at their
FTP server, or that the FTP server also serves via HTTP.

No it's not - if it's serving via HTTP, it's not an FTP server.

It's a fair assumption, given the hostname of "ftp", that there's *also* an
FTP server running on that host, but that fact has absolutely no bearing on
how the HTTP server behaves.

sherm--

 

[lovecreatesbea...]

That's not an HTML page.

I find that both http://ftp.gnu.org/README and ftp://ftp.gnu.org/README
(on IE6, I request ftp://ftp.gnu.org then double click on README.) get
exact the same file.

Same way it's done in any plain text file.

Thank you.

I now have one more question.

Are the plain text files such as .txt, .c (source file of C code,
text), .sh (source file of Bourne shell code, text) on HTTP server
same as them presented on any brouwser? Do they have the same
appearance and layout including new-lines, continuous blanks on any
browser? Is it the same behavior cross browsers, does the standard
specifications specify this?

If I want to put some plain and simple text files on HTTP server, can
I choose filename suffixes such as .txt, .c, .h, .sh other than .htm
or .html? Is it a good choice?