Re: Browsers Resolving Symbolic Link (e.g. Windows Shortcuts)

William Gill <noreply@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in alt.html:

Five By Five wrote:
Does anyone know if Firefox (or IE?) running in a Microsoft Windows
environment requesting a resource via LINK element will be given by
the OS the file if it is referenced through a symbolic link?

For example,

The HTML document has the following element:

<link href="style/std.css" type="text/css">

The HTML document is located physically in the absolute path
'D:\Programming\My Interactive Pages\' using standard conventions of
the Windows operating environment.

That path also contains a subdirectory (subfolder) 'style' in the
same directory, and the subdirectory 'style' contains the file
'std.css' which is a Windows shortcut file. The shortcut points to
'C:\style\std.css'.

Not sure this is the appropriate place to ask your question, but maybe
if we can help clear up a couple of your misconceptions it will either
clear up your problem or redirect you in a more appropriate direction.

First off what you are asking about is a file system issue, not HTML
or CSS.

I agree that this is specific to the response or activities of an
operating system or environment. I put the question here though because
HTML document preparers put the document on a computer system and they
must specify a reference to the resource(s) they use in the rendering of
the document. Many of those who prepare and place HTML documents use some
rather common or widespread operating environments, such as Windows or
Unix, They would probably read this newsgroup and have the experience of
the unique or idiosyncratic features such as a "href" or "src" attribute
to an element retrieving a resource INDIRECTLY, namely through a system
feature such as a symbolic link/shortcut to the resource.

The only connection to HTML or CSS is via the http server (a
program running on a particular OS and file system), the program that
interprets a request from your browser and "serves" a resource
(document, etc.). So what ever the server decides to "serve" will be
dictated by either the file system's interpretation, or server
options.
In either case the request can be translated from what was asked
for,
to what is actually delivered ("if they ask for this, give them
that").
For example your question asked this group a question. You could
(and
like should have) received a 303 status ("the resource you request is
located elsewhere"), but I have chosen to "translate" your request,
and provide (what I hope is) some helpful resource.

Yes, it is true that the client making the request via the 'href' or
'src' to the server would have no idea the mechanism of how the resource
is retrieved. I am wondering specifically about how the server finds the
resource (if the request is made with the http protocol).

My development activities are not requesting the HTML document or its
dependence on resources through the 'http' protocol, if this is of any
consequence. I am actually reading the document into the browser through
the local filesystem (one browser refers to it as the 'file' protocol,
while another just presents the document as the absolute path describing
the local filesystem.


Secondly a windows "shortcut" is not a symbolic link. A shortcut is
more like a HTML "bookmark", it is a reminder placed in a convenient
place reminding you where to find what you want, or reminding you what
to ask for. When your browser requests a resource (a shortcut file),
the HTTP server dutifully serves that resource, it doesn't try to read
and understand that resource and translate your request for you. A
symbolic link on the other hand provides an "alias" name for the file
in the file system.

The shortcut in Windows actually appears to act exactly like the symbolic
link in a Unix file system. If you attempt to "open" the Windows shortcut
or the Unix symbolic link that refers to the resource in the file system,
the system operations of opening act on the resource itself rather than on
the object/resource whose role it is to act as a pointer or reference to
the resource (i.e., link/shortcut).

While a server (process) to a client requesting resources for an HTML
document might not be expected itself to understand the nature of the
resource found through a URL, the operating system (kernel) upon which it
caries out its tasks would be expected to understand and resolve this.

But perhaps you are right, and there is a better forum for this question.

.

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