Re: [xsl] [OT] Re: [xsl] External-graphic

Subject: Re: [xsl] [OT] Re: [xsl] External-graphic
From: Owen Rees <owen.rees@xxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 06 Mar 2006 10:59:46 +0000
--On Friday, March 03, 2006 18:30:59 +0100 Florent Georges wrote:

"G. Ken Holman" wrote:

If the filename is c:\logo.jpg, then I belive the correct
URL syntax for this is:

file:///c:/logo.jpg

I think you can even drop the hostname part (not just left the name empty), as in:

file:/C:/logo.jpg

I *think*...

The registry of URI schemes is maintained by IANA - see <http://www.iana.org/assignments/uri-schemes.html>.


The relevant entry is:
  file  Host-specific file names  [RFC1738]

The relevant section of RFC1738 <http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1738.txt> is section 3.10.

A file URL takes the form:

      file://<host>/<path>
[...]
  As a special case, <host> can be the string "localhost" or the empty
  string; this is interpreted as `the machine from which the URL is
  being interpreted'.

The form "file:/x..." where 'x' is any character other than '/' is not a syntactically correct URL according to RFC1738.

Those who are using Java (and thus any of the many XSL tools implemented in Java) will find that the "file:///<path>" form which is correct according to RFC1738 will be 'normalised' to the syntactically incorrect "file:/<path>" by some operations. Fortunately, this form is not defined to mean something else by the RFC, and seems to be handled consistently.

The form with an explicitly specified <host> is best avoided. The effect seems to depend of which application is doing what as well as which OS is providing the files being referred to.


-- Owen Rees Hewlett Packard Laboratories, Bristol, UK

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