On Fri, May 08, 2009 at 08:33:11AM +0100, Chris Bowditch wrote: > Andreas Delmelle wrote: > > Hi Simon and Andreas, > >> On 07 May 2009, at 21:15, Simon Pepping wrote: >> >>> On Thu, May 07, 2009 at 03:08:30PM -0000, [email protected] wrote: >>> >>>> Author: cbowditch >>>> Date: Thu May 7 15:08:30 2009 >>>> New Revision: 772672 >>>> >>>> URL: http://svn.apache.org/viewvc?rev=772672&view=rev >>>> Log: >>>> bug fix: allow back slashes for file URLs as they are commonly used >>>> in Windows >>> >>> >>> I would not like to call file:///C:\mydirectory\myfile a correct >>> URL. URLs are one format where Windows and Unix users use the same >>> forward slashes. URL is a standard for all OSes alike. >> >> >> I very much agree with that assessment. Browsing through the related >> RFCs, one notices that the forward slash is a 'reserved' character, >> while a backslash is considered 'unwise'. The reason is that "gateways >> and other transport agents are known to sometimes modify such >> characters, or they are >> used as delimiters". >> Following RFC 2396, the URL 'file:///c:\mydirectory\myfile' is not >> equivalent to 'file:///c:/mydirectory/myfile' from the point of view >> of URI syntax. > > Whilst you are both technically correct, I made the change because > backslashes in file URLs used to work until revision 752153 when > Jeremias inadvertantly removed support for this. Whilst this may be > against the URL spec this is a feature that improves usability of the > product. A lot of users out there aren't aware of the details of RFC > 2396 and are used to being able to use backslashes in file URLs > (especially on Windows systems). So if we remove support for this we may > get a few more questions on fop-user.
If it used to work until recently, it should be kept working. Otherwise, I would very much like to tell users that URIs are a different thing than path names, and that backward slashes are out. Simon -- Simon Pepping home page: http://www.leverkruid.eu
