Re: Windows URLs

> OK. Details please, and I'll write that collation :-)
you need to add dropped letters (by infering them from a UK dictionary)
and take as equal any letters within a couple of keys on a UK keyboard
and potentially transpose letters if I'm typing faster with one hand
than the other. If I'm typing on a US keyboard you also have to
(potentially) replace any character by the character that appears in
that position on a UK keyboard. That just accounts for bad typing, if
you could also correct spelling errors (ie mistakes in my head, not by my
fingers) that would earn extra bonus points.


> Seriously though, does anyone know what the rules are for file: URLs
> on Windows systems (i.e. how do you encode drive names and UNC paths
> (is that the right term for drives on other servers?) into a file URL)?

we had a long thread on that earlier. The outcome was essentially that
it's a) under specified and b) different systems do it differently.

But in a file URI as in most hierarchical URI schemes, / not \ is used
to denote path separators (used to resolve relative URI) and the bit
between the :// and the first / is the machine name (which may be empty)
which would suggest that

a:\x\y\z

should be
file:///a:/x/y/z

and

\\othermachine\foo\bar

should be

file://othermachine/foo/bar

You commented that d:a\b\c is not the same as  d:\a\b\c which means (I
guess?) that you want d:a\b\c  to be relative to some current directory
on the a drive that is stored elsewhere. I don't think you can code the
idea of multiple current directories in the URI syntax you can only have
one base URI (and if you are using relative URI you never use the uri
scheme prefix so you'd just use x/y/z if you knew you were on the a
drive already) So in general I think that your system would have to know
what is the current directory on a: and then explictly add that to the
URI to produce
file:///a:/some/place/x/y/z

David


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