[XML-SIG] file urls in urllib

[Thomas B. Passin]

Mark D. Anderson wrote -

>
> what is bothering me is that assembly of a url from its scheme,net_loc,path
components
> (or parsing a url into those components) would seemingly have to know about
the
> server OS,
> just  to know what to do with host-path separator slash, which is sometimes
significant and sometimes not.
>
If you are getting a file by http, you ALWAYS use forward slashes, no volume
name, and the "http:" scheme.  No server-os ambiguity here.

The only time this issue would arise is when you want to load files on your
own machine or on a networked file system connected to your machine.  In this
case, you presumably know the right form.

The real issue, I think, is for the handler to know when it encounters an
opaque file: path, so that it can send it as is to the OS.  Otherwise, if the
url follows the rfc for transparent file: urls, use forward slashes and the
volume designator (c:/ on Windows, for example).  The handler is supposed to
be able to parse this and translate it for the OS it is running on.

The other issue is to decide how lenient we want to be in allowing variant
forms.  Any one know about what works and doesn't on a Mac?  And will this
change with OS-X?

Cheers,

Tom P