Re: file://localhost => local: ?

Kevin Altis (altis@ibeam.jf.intel.com)
Mon, 21 Mar 1994 20:06:43 --100


At 7:14 PM 3/21/94 +0000, Larry Masinter wrote:
>Another more serious problem is that many HTML documents on the net
>still use 'file:' instead of 'ftp:'. To get this to work with the
>proxy gateway, I set things up so that
>
>setenv file_proxy = http://myserver:/
>
>and then set up the httpd.conf on the server so that:
> Pass file:* ftp:*

Regardless of the URL confusion, you shouldn't have had to change X Mosaic
or the cern_httpd. URLs of the form file://host.domain/ are interpreted by
Cello, Lynx, Mosaic, etc. as ftp URLs, so the proxying still works
correctly. URLs of the form file://localhost/ are considered local
filesystem references.

Yes, use of file: rather than ftp: is rather confusing. It is the job of
the URI working group to document correct URL usage, but it will be
sometime before people can be persuaded not to use file: instead of ftp:.

ka