LYNX-DEV Request for comments: GOTO address interpretation

[Tomasz J. Cholewo]

Hi,

The discussion around the 'g', '..' prompted me to start thinking about
the interpretation of 'goto' addresses.

Now, when I type 'g', 'yahoo', <enter> it is expanded to
'http://www.yahoo.com/' but if I had a file or a directory named 'yahoo'
in my current directory I would end up in something like
'file://localhost/home/tjchol01/yahoo'.

It could be more versatile for the default interpretation to depend on
the current context: http or DIRED.  While in the http mode GOTO 'yahoo'
would always try to connect to the WWW server.  This approach could
allow one to use a relative URL like '../../b.html' to change to another
document with respect to the current URL.  (The GOTO '..' feature
implemented in my patch is a part of this bigger picture :-).)

To switch from the http:// to DIRED contexts one could type 'file:'
prefix or just '.'  which is pretty useless by itself now.  While in
DIRED, a not found GOTO filename would be treated as an attempt to
connect to 'http://filename'.

It is probably a bit against `the spirit of the WWW' (and sometimes
unfeasible) to browse the web like a hierarchical filesystem but
probably many people would find good use for this approach.

I would love to hear your opinions.

Tom

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