Subject: Ftp-WG: HOST command and I18N Draft

From: "Curtin, William" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 19 Mar 1999 13:08:19 -0500

I'm trying to spit out the next (and hopefully the last) version of the
I18N draft. I've told my boss this is the only thing I can work on until its
done. I have a question about the use of the HOST command.

1. Presumably a virtual host could be set up to define a given language
(i.e. myserver.com, english.myserver.com and german.myserver.com all
associated with the same IP address) so that a "LANG" command would not
always be necessary. I'm saying in the draft that language support can be
achieved by a virtual host, if so configured, or by the use of a new LANG
command.

2. My question is: what happens if I issue a LANG command followed by a HOST
command to a virtual host which may support a language environment different
than that defined by the LANG command. Presumably, if I did a FEAT before
the HOST command I'd get all of the features and options that are supported
by the FTP server. I'm assuming that I'd potentially get a different
response to the FEAT command if I issued it after the HOST command (i.e. one
that is customized for that virtual host). So I could have a situation like:

TCP connection to german.myserver.com
S>220
FEAT
S> 211
S>  ...
S>  HOST
S>  LANG en;de
S>  ...
S> 211 end
LANG en
S> 211 "Language set to English"
HOST german.myserver.com
S>234 <Now is the greeting following the host command in English or German? 
       That is, has the HOST command overridden the LANG command preceding 
       it because support of German was part of the virtual host?>
FEAT
S> 211
S>  ...
S>  HOST
S>  LANG <is "en;de" returned or just "de"?>
S>  ...
S> 211 end

3. Perhaps the HOST command was not intended to be used to support language,
in which case all I need to say is use LANG command to negotiate language
prior to a HOST command. 

4. Given that HOST is a mandatory command I intend to use it to tell if a
new server is talking to an old client (because the server will see the USER
command after connection vice a HOST command prior to authentication) or if
an old server is talking to a new client (because the client will receive a
550 response to the HOST command). Sound reasonable?

5. The draft, as I have it written only addresses language support for
greeting messages and command responses from the server.

						thanks for your help,
							 bill