Re: rssh.el interactions with ange-ftp/efs
>>>> On Sat, 30 Jan 1999 05:27:28 -0500,
>>>> Richard Stallman <rms(a)gnu.org> said:
As for bad points of URLs.. for #1, emacs should be smarter about
//.
If the string looks like a URL, don't do the special stripping that
emacs does.
I won't say "no way", but I think I would have to see
an
implementation which "does the right thing" in all the cases before I
could be confident that it is possible. Some people think this is an
easy problem, but I think it is hard. I am not sure that it is
possible to meet all of these requirements. An implementation which
does so would prove it is possible.
I agree completely. If somebody wrote a version of expand-file-name
that did the "right thing" with URLs, without messing up other stuff,
then EFS would support it. In fact, if expand-file-name did do this,
then it would be possible for EFS to simultaneously support the
ange-ftp syntax and the URL syntax, according to context.
I am not sure if this can be done -- can't say either way without
trying, but I suspect that Richard is right. It would be harder than
it appears. I can't see myself writing this any time soon, but I
would certainly integrate EFS with it if somebody were to write one
that works. The trick will be that any new version of
expand-file-name must do the right thing 100% of the time, not just
most of the time. Bugs in expand-file-name cannot be tolerated. This
function is too critical.
--sandy