FTPd is another program
whose human interface I'm glad to be associated with. FTP is a cool
example of the application of 'artificial intelligence' to a common
problem, namely transferring binary files in text mode or vice versa.
FTPd uses a system wide file type mapping (provided by Internet
Config) to determine how to map extensions (such as .gif) to
Macintosh file types and creators ('GIFf' and
'JVWR'). This database also contains information as to
whether a given file type should be transferred in text or binary
mode. FTPd uses this information to spit out a warning if you
accidentally transfer a file in the wrong mode. You can choose to
ignore the warning if you know what you're doing, but it has saved me
numerous times.