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

[Daniel Veillard]

On Thu, Nov 04, 2004 at 01:32:29PM -0500, Avery Pennarun wrote:
> >   do like Mozilla does file:///etc/hosts , like 2396 suggests
> 
> Mozilla accepts file:/etc/hosts as valid input.

  Sorry you lose credibility there !

  It immediately transforms it to the proper form file:///etc/hosts
This is a "workaround broken user input in the text field" like
it accepts "www.w3.org" but will immediately "correct" it to 
"http://www.w3.org/". So following your point freedesktop.org
should also allows an hostname directly, because after all 
everybody knows that it means http://$hostname/

  I persist and maintain that you are seriously confused. That
broken user input should be dealt with sometimes and corrected
but this is *NOT* a reason to allow broken and unspecified
behaviour to enter freedesktop.org specs. 

  Now if you *REALLY* believe what you are saying, go work on
an IETF draft for the "file" protocol, that is immensely needed,
but bypassing specs by putting workaround in other specs higher
in the stack is seriously *WRONG*. Don't do this ! You may think
it's easier to push this at the freedesktop.org level, this is
however not the right place, and the best way to screw up fd.o 
effort in that direction and loose credibility as soon as more
standard aware people will look at it.

Daniel

-- 
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