#24 Missing standard schemes in packages/tiktools.tcl
Currently present:
http - web
https - web via SSL
ftp - File transfer protocol
gopher - mostly defunct, gopher
news - news/nntp
Missing standard schemes:
nntp - see below
mailto - Create e-mail
telnet - invoke telnet connection
wais - database access
ldap - directory access
imap - mailbox and shared-mail access
pnm - "Real" streaming access
(to be fair, Netscape also ignores the nntp scheme)
Missing additional URL schemes
about - Netscape internal (e.g. easter eggs)
finger - IE may still take a port-directed gopher
Lynx recognizes
file - useful for online coaching
aol - IM and CHAT variants should be recognized,
at least. E.g. aol://9293.<screenname>
irc - e.g. irc://irc.dal.net irc://events.scifi.com
rlogin - same format as telnet
ssh - same format as telnet
tn3270 - same format as telnet
view-source - use a different netscape_remote call
prospero - see prospero documentation
pop3 - Netscape
mailbox - Netscape
snews - SSL+nntp and SSL+news
Note: nntp vs news
As originally specified, nntp takes a servername, news NEVER does. Netscape does not follow this convention. E.g. one would use
nntp://servername/news.group.name/articlenumber
or news:message@id to use the local/default server
e.g. specify single-server newsgroups such as those on forum.linuxworld.com using an "nntp://forum.linuxworld.com/" URL. Because Netscape is broken for this, there probably should be a work-around when invoking it.
AIM isn\'t meant to be a universal Internet launcher... at most we should support schemes which will work in standard browsers (Netscape, Lynx). In those cases, simply adding an <a href> wrapper is all we should do, to be passed to show_url. We shouldn\'t be doing anything to launch non-browser programs. I think nntp, telnet, and maybe mailto should be supported. (email addresses are already auto-linked).
I agree that we\'re not a generic program/internet launcher. MOST of the URLs above, however, _do_ open directly (even if via mailcap configured helper) when sent as an \"openURL()\" to netscape, for example, and all but a couple open in Lynx. From my understanding of the \"start\" command on Windows32, it\'s very much the same for those services which have configured appications.
As for the \"aol://\" openers, I don\'t think we should wait for Netscape or Lynx to support \'em, at least for IM\'s and Chats, because this _is_ an aol-related client.
Lynx (for quite some time) also supports cso: which is one I missed from the above list. There\'s no _need_ to support \"about:\", except that it\'s apt to be used in chat.
As for the current handling of E-mail addresses - paste a Message-Id into a message and it highlights (improperly) with a mailto: prefix which does NOT belong there. No question to you about whether it should. But really that\'s part of this bug - the incorrect handling of standard URL schemes.
I wasn\'t suggesting such uncommonly used private schemes as \"lynxexec\" and \"lynxcgi\".
The Lynx (long) list includes:
news: nntp: snews: newspost: newsreply: snewspost: snewsreply: mailto: file: data: lynxexec: lynxprog: lynxcgi: LYNXPRINT: LYNXDOWNLOAD: LYNXDIRED: LYNXHIST: LYNXKEYMAP: LYNXIMGMAP: LYNXCOOKIE: http: https: goper: ftp: wais: telnet: tn3270: rlogin: cso: finger: afs: prospero: - where the all-caps ones are intended to be internal to the parser.
If you type (or pass) a commandline to lynx giving
nntp://<your usenet server>/*
it makes an NNTP connection to that server, and fetches a complete list of newsgroups as one would expect from the URL standard. Then it formats it as if a webpage giving nntp://<your usenet server>/<groupname> for each of the groups, giving the description of the group adjacent.
Navigator, of course, ignores it, but a similar one starting with \"news:\" passed to Communicator, will have a similar operation.
Mmm... good points... I think the list just might need to be wittled down a little still. I\'m trying these out in my browsers (Netscape 4.72 and Lynx 2.8.2rel.1 w/SSL), and a lot of them aren\'t working... afs, prospero, irc work in neither, cso, finger only works in Lynx... about doesn\'t work in Lynx (I\'ve never seen anybody use it in chat either... *shrug*) pnm is only supported in RealPlayer, as far as I can tell. ssh also does not seem to work in either Netscape or Lynx. view-source I don\'t think we should really deal with...
I agree it would be nice to support aol:// stuff, but implementation will be tricky... probably the easiest way would be to catch aol:// schemes in show_url
There are actually quite a few bugs with the mailto code. That should definitely be addressed soon.
as a side note: Lynx also supports the news:// scheme that Netscape uses. i.e. you can say something like news://news.blahhost.com/comp.blah
I lowered the priority down to 3, as this is more of a feature request than a bug.