358887 - file: URL mismatch with Microsoft conventions

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 70871

(Core :: Networking: File, defect)

Description

[John Aldridge]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1) Gecko/20061010 Firefox/2.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1) Gecko/20061010 Firefox/2.0

Microsoft provide a function

   UrlCreateFromPath

which converts a file pathname into an equivalent URL. If you pass this a UNC path, e.g.,

   \\respighi\d\tile.png

it returns a URL like

   file://respighi/d/tile.png

unfortunately, if I then use this URL in an SVG <image> element, SVG does not display the image.

If I edit the SVG file to change this syntax to

   file://///respighi/d/tile.png

then the SVG file displays properly, but this is not a convenient workround when creating the SVG file automatically.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Place a valid image in a folder addressable with a UNC path
2. Convert that UNC path to a URL using UrlCreateFromPath
3. Create an SVG file with an <image> element referring to that path
4. View the SVG file in FireFox

Actual Results:  
The image is not displayed

Expected Results:  
The image should be displayed

Comment 1

[John Aldridge]

Attachment: Attachment illustrating problem

Note -- you will not be able to use this attachment directly, because it refers to a UNC path which only exists on my LAN. It should be easy to change the example to suit your enviroment, however.

Comment 2

[Christian :Biesinger (don't email me, ping me on IRC)]

bug 70871?

Comment 3

[John Aldridge]

(In reply to comment #2)
> bug 70871?

It certainly looks like it.

I didn't realise that I'd stepped right into a flame war. And I did search for an existing bug first, honest!

I think I side with the view which says that the detailed interpretation of file: URLs is deliberately left underspecified and is expected to be operating system specific; and hence that Microsoft are entitled to specify that the host part of the URL is to be interpreted as a UNC name in this way.

Comment 4

[Jesse Ruderman]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 70871 ***