file:/ vs file://<host>/ vs file:///

[Daniel Veillard]

On Thu, Nov 04, 2004 at 12:18:57PM -0500, Avery Pennarun wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 04, 2004 at 11:35:54AM -0500, Daniel Veillard wrote:
> 
> > Either you have an authority or not. In any case you cannot have
> >    file://foo
> > 
> >   Now what semantic would you provide for
> >    file:/foo ?
> 
> file:/foo == file://localhost/foo
> 
> Everybody already knows this.

  it's not in any spec, sorry ...

> We can argue semantics forever, but any
> standards organization who defines file:/foo as *anything* else is obviously
> completely out to lunch and should be ignored.

  Before XML everybody though that markup was case insensitive, and got
proved wrong ...

> The "correct" form of a file url/uri is definitely file://localhost/foo.
> However, software should support input of file:/foo to allow for the
> standard way *everyone* already uses their software, and (although I'd be
> willing to give up this last point) should display file:/foo to avoid
> confusing-looking visual noise. 99% of computer users have no idea what a
> localhost is, despite having some vague idea of what www.google.com is. 

  use file:///foo , do NOT accept file:/foo. Nobody has to type 'localhost'

> Therefore auto-inserting "localhost" on their URL bar will not help anyone
> use their software more efficiently, and we shouldn't do it.

  do like Mozilla does file:///etc/hosts , like 2396 suggests

Daniel

-- 
Daniel Veillard      | Red Hat Desktop team http://redhat.com/
veillard at redhat.com  | libxml GNOME XML XSLT toolkit  http://xmlsoft.org/
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