GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 446136
UNC file share notation should also be usable, not just URIs
Last modified: 2012-09-05 00:54:27 UTC
This is a feature request. Let's say I want to browse to a file share on a Windows machine. Let's call the Windows machine "winbox", and the file share name "winshare". In Windows, I could simply press Start -> Run, then type this in and "Run" it: \\winbox\winshare (This opens a Windows Explorer window showing the file share.) The notation of this command above is called "UNC" ("Universal Naming Convention"). It's actually a standard: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Naming_Convention#Universal_Naming_Convention If I want to browse this same file share in Gnome, I'd Open Nautilus and use URI notation instead of UNC: smb://winbox/winshare I think it's vital that Nautilus also be able to support the same UNC notation that works in Windows, in addition to the URI notation. Konqueror 3.5.6 can do this already!! If Gnome wants to make headway in the enterprise where Windows dominates the scene, it needs to support the notation that Windows computers use to visit each others file shares. There is also a second part to this feature request: Once Nautilus can open UNC pathnames, there also needs to be a way to associate any UNC pathname clicked on in any application to opening that UNC pathname in a spawned instance of Nautilus. Perhaps this should be a configuration option in System -> Preferences -> Preferred Applications. This way a user could specify Konqueror (where UNC pathnames are currently supported). Come on nautilus, time to catch up ;) Cheers, -- Dustin Harriman PS: I also opened Ubuntu bug 119747 on this: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nautilus/+bug/119747
Stef, any thoughts on this?
Yes that would be nice for enterprise users. However it's not just a nautilus feature. The most common location to find these UNC names is in emails. Currently we're standardized on URI's everywhere. Adding this additional URI-style format and making it work as expected, is a bit of work. Alex, Matthew, how would this impact GFile and Evolution's URI in-email-detection code respectively?
I guess first step for Evolution is to get WebKit to recognize UNC paths as something clickable (a quick test suggests it doesn't), and then either WebKit or Evolution can convert it to an equivalent smb:// URI -- perhaps with some helper function in GLib -- and let the usual URI handling machinery take over.
(In reply to comment #3) > ... can convert it to an equivalent smb:// URI -- perhaps with some > helper function in GLib -- and let the usual URI handling machinery take over. That part seems like a work around in case the GFile/gvfs URI handling code can't be made to handle UNCs.
*** Bug 662790 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***