Re: LYNX-DEV lynx-386 & file: relative links !

[David Woolley]

> 
> c:
> lynx http://localhost/a:\mydoc.html
> 

I don't know that the concept of a relative URL is defined for file:
URLs, but if it is it will be defined the same way as for ftp:, i.e. replace
everything after the last /.  The last / in your case is before the a:,
so a relative link to the same document would become:

http://localhost/mydoc.html

which will behave as you have described.

This is a common cause of broken web pages.  MSIE treats \ as a synonym for
/, apparently in http: as well as file: references, and is broken.  People
construct pages using \ and verify them with MSIE and expect them to work
for people with non-broken browsers.

In fact, all the C programming environments that I know of for
DOS/Windows, make the reverse assumption, that / is a synonym for \.
The only time the distinction is necessary is with command line switches.
Therefore all the component separators for URLs should be /, even for
Microsoft systems.  (I'd be surprisedif if Lynx even recognizes / as a
synonym for - on the command line.)

(Historically, I believe the roots of MS-DOS are in RT11, which didn't 
have sub-directories and used / as a option marker.  Unix used the more
natural / as a file marker (common to paper files, not just computer ones)
so the developer's of CP/M chose to use \, as the nearest character that
didn't clash with /.  Now some people even believe that \ is slash, not
a rather obscure reverse slash.)


I think you also used the term symlink.  I don't think you meant that, as
the Microsoft world doesn't have these.  The nearest is a Win 95/NT 4
shortcut, but these are a hybrid which varies from a simple symbolic
link to almost a short batch file.  I don't know if Lynx treats the simple
cases of .LNK files as special in Windows file: URLs.
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