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)?
There are no rules. The "file:" URI scheme appears to be very poorly
documented, and its mapping onto various operating system file naming
schemes is even less well documented. However, Dave Pawson has collected
together some useful notes at
http://www.dpawson.co.uk/xsl/sect4/uri.html
and
http://www.dpawson.co.uk/xsl/sect4/uriIncl.html
This doesn't actually address the UNC question, but I'm pretty sure that
conclusion when we last discussed it on the list was that the correct form
(i.e. the one most likely to work) was file:////server/file/name - yes, four
slashes.
Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/
P.S. Does anyone think I ought to allow windows path names in places where
the spec requires a URI? I'm disinclined to do it, but it does give people a
problem moving to a product that enforces the rules strictly from one that
doesn't.