From kde-devel  Thu Jun 17 07:04:42 1999
From: Roberto Alsina <ralsina () unl ! edu ! ar>
Date: Thu, 17 Jun 1999 07:04:42 +0000
To: kde-devel
Subject: Re: KURL bugs
X-MARC-Message: https://marc.info/?l=kde-devel&m=92962362019211

On Thu, 17 Jun 1999, Alex Zepeda wrote:

> On Thu, 17 Jun 1999, Stephan Kulow wrote:
> 
> > > In general, URLs are widely across all the modern platforms by various
> > > applications and have well documented structure (RFC 1738).
> 
> Really, I read the successor to RFC 1738, and IMO it's not all that clear
> on any number of things (#2396).
> 
> > > Problem description:
> > > 
> > > Unfortunately, some URLs obtained through KURL class do not conform to
> > > the RFC 1738. This happens in the case of the file URL scheme.
> 
> Most of them *do* conform, but some of them don't.
> 
> > > In KDE, file URLs are formed without two forward slashes following
> > > "file:".
> > > That is, a local file named "/mnt" will be represented as "file:/mnt"
> > > in KDE as opposed to a correct "file:////mnt" or
> > > "file://localhost//mnt".
> >
> > Well, I don't have the RFC handy, but I'm sure it allows file:/mnt too
> > as I've read it twice :)
> 
> Well, Netscape allows file:/mnt, but not file:/.  Also, file://mnt does
> not seem to work.  So, I really see no problem with allowing something
> that seems much more logical (since you're usually not specifying a
> hostname for a local file system.

Netscape doesn't do right any file URL that depends on netscape's working
directory, so file://mnt won't work (that would mean the file or directory
mnt on no specified directory, because // means "end of protocol" and
there's no slash left to mean the root.

file:///mnt (three /) should work, though.

> > > Another problem with URLs in KDE is that its applications don't assume
> > > that the path is fully qualified and will attempt to append the
> > > current directory name in front of any name which doesn't start with
> > > '/'.
> > right. I don't see this as bug.
> 
> What? How does a URI/URL pathname not start with a '/'?

You did try one above :-)

If a program is told to open "filename", it should somehow guess that
means file://localhost/`pwd`/filename and not file://filename/ 

Anyone has an idea on how to do that, and not add at least a / in front of
URLs without one?

> * Since there appears to be special handling for any URI with the file
> protocol, and since UNC paths won't often be local files (if at all), it
> would be best (IMO) to either use //host/path and use the protocol "unc"
> or "smb".

smb://nodename/path/file looks very good, and there's no need to mess with
file:/ 

There could even be a mechanism to make smb://localhost/path/file be
automagically translated to file:/path/file so that the user can learn
only one way if he wants...

 ("\''/").__..-''"`-. .         Roberto Alsina
 `9_ 9  )   `-. (    ).`-._.`)  ralsina@unl.edu.ar
 (_Y_.)' ._   ) `._`.  " -.-'   Centro de Telematica
  _..`-'_..-_/ /-'_.'           Universidad Nacional del Litoral
(l)-'' ((i).' ((!.'             Santa Fe - Argentina
                                KDE Developer (MFCH)
An opinion you can't give reasons for is not an opinion worth having (I)