FTP download too difficult
I am reporting this as usability bug. Ftp downloads with stock TBB are broken.
Examples:
Broken in Tor Browser: ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/alive/alive-2.0.0.tar.xz www download working: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/alive/alive-2.0.0.tar.xz (Just for the sake of a good test example.)
Broken in Tor Browser: ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/16.0/linux-i686/ach/firefox-16.0.tar.bz2 www download working: https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/16.0/linux-i686/ach/firefox-16.0.tar.bz2
I don't understand why #1259 (moved) is considered fixed. Even if setting TrackHostExits in torrc while downloading something from FTP is considered the fix, its nontrivial to get this information.
Feel free to close this as "wontfix" if you think this isn't interesting enough to fix.
In case you are interested in fixing this, at least mentioning this issue in a more visible place than deeply buried in trac at the bottom of a highly technical ticket would be an improvement. Perhaps in the user manual or in some known issues section or so.
For an out of the box usable solution, mike had some ideas here https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/1259#comment:9 which probable require feature requests against Tor.