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

[Gautam H. Thaker]

Hi:

My usage is exactly as you are envisioning - in side a corp. network. Here we 
are all on a shared file system. We have many projects and each of these have 
lots and lots of files (which we org. in some sensible manner.) THis has been so 
for years. Now, what we  are also doing is to have wiki pages for the projects. 
I want the wiki pages, which have lots of free flowing text and references to 
many external URLs, also have a *pointer* (i.e. URL) to a local file. I do *not* 
want a copy of the file uploaded, that does no good since duplication will 
occcur. Of course my long term intent is that I should be able to click on one 
of these file URLs and appropriately set applicaiton, such as openoffice, would 
let me edit it etc. I can navigate around my project world using annoted wiki 
pages or if I just care for files via normal "cd", "ls" ,etc.

I hope this makes sense. I think mozilla ignores it prob. due to restrictions 
placed on it by apache to ignore files outside of root may be (/var/www/html, 
for example.) So i think that can be overcome with config files for apache.

Even c:/windows/foo/local.file can be useful in a wiki. Here it just refers to 
local files for everyone. I could in my wiki page say:

"To make life easier click on link below and comment out line ......

file:///c:/windows/foo/local/file.

"

I admit, this is strage use of wiki, but in some cases useful. (But my use case 
of file: is not this extreme, local per PC file case. I just want to point into 
our shared NFS filesystem.)

Gautam H. Thaker
Distributed Processing Lab; Lockheed Martin Adv. Tech. Labs
3 Executive Campus; Cherry Hill, NJ 08002
856-792-9754, fax 856-792-9925  email: gthaker at atl.lmco.com


Neil Herber wrote:
> 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