[pmwiki-users] how does one encode "file:" link in a wiki page?

[Neil Herber]

At 2005-01-24  01:53 PM -0500, Gautam H. Thaker is rumored to have said:
>Hi Folks:
>
>I am new to PmWiki. I am using mozialla browser and RH 9 filesystems. How 
>can I encode a
>
>file:<path>
>
>link on a wiki page? I have tried
>
>file:/
>file://
>file:///
>
>and none of them seem to work. A highlightable link shows up, but clicking 
>it does nothing where I had expected that the browser would bring up that 
>file as if I typed that file URL in a mozilla tab window.

I have been puzzling over your question all day. I could not figure out how 
a wiki page with file:<path> on it would be of any use except on a single 
machine or on a corporate LAN with shared fileservers. The path needs to be 
a full path including a drive identifier. So in the Windoze world (but 
using forward slashes) an example might be:

C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/Administrator/Cookies/

And your URL would be:

file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/Administrator/Cookies/

If you try this on Firefox - it does nothing. Put it into IE 6 and it 
happily displays the contents of the Administrator's cookie directory. But 
(and this is a big but) if this is on a web page, the directory that opens 
up will be on the user's machine which he could open anyway.

If the path referred to a file server it might make more sense to me:

file:///Q:/CorporateData/financials/secret/sharesfortheboss.doc

That would be an interesting URL on a corporate LAN, but it is non-routable 
to the internet unless someone is connected via VPN to the corporate net.

So I think the answer to your question is that Mozilla is not willing to 
honor the request, but IE 6 would be glad to.

My question is, how can you use this?


Neil

Neil Herber
Corporate info at http://www.eton.ca/
Eton Systems, 15 Pinepoint Drive, Nepean, ON, Canada K2H 6B1
Tel: (613) 829-4668