[whatwg] URL: file: URLs

[Boris Zbarsky]

On 10/31/12 4:27 AM, Mikko Rantalainen wrote:
> (1) file://c:/foo tries to connect to server "c:" and request shared
> entity "foo".

I don't think that's really acceptable, but see below.

> I understand that (1) would behave different from some legacy user
> agents

Well, it would behave differently from Gecko, for sure.  Have you tested 
any other UAs?  As in, do you have any evidence that "some" is not "all" 
in that sentence?  Also, how are you defining "legacy"?  Is it the same 
as "existing"?  ;)

> but there really is not interoperability with such file URLs

Is that a guess, or do you have data that you're forgetting to present? 
  Serious question....

> Some legacy user agents also support URLs such as
>
> (5) file:///c|/foo which is considered equal to (3). I have no idea why
> the pipe is considered better character than colon here.

Such URIs were used commonly back when various things that processed 
URIs went into conniptions when they saw the ':' reserved character, iirc.

In fact, at one point there were UAs that supported the version with '|' 
but not with ':'.  And hence there was content that used that syntax.

And again, what's needed here is data on which UAs do what, not generic 
statements about "some".

-Boris