URL filename syntax?

[kai.grossjohann@gmx.net (Kai Großjohann)]

Is it desirable to use URL-like syntax for remote files?

Currently, Tramp uses this format:

    /method:user@host:localname

My idea is to use

    /method://user@host/localname

where the initial slash is optional.  The initial slash is needed to
provide the old magic slash behavior.

There are some issues with this:

* The URL syntax should be as close to the standard as possible.  But
  the ftp URL RFC states that an ftp URL looks like this:

      ftp://user@host/component1/component2/.../componentN

  where each component can be a string or empty.  The semantics are
  that the user agend does "CWD component1" followed by "CWD
  component2" and so on.

  This means that ftp://user@host/etc/motd refers to the file
  ~user/etc/motd on the remote host, as do ftp://user@host//etc/motd
  and ftp://user@host/a/b/c//etc/motd.  In order to reference
  /etc/motd on the remote host, one has to use
  ftp://user@host/%2Fetc/motd.

  I think we can't require our users to type %2F in such cases, and
  therefore I propose to change the ftp URL syntax to interpret
  ftp://user@host//foo as the file /foo on the remote host.  (And
  ftp://user@host/foo refers to ~user/foo.)

* Tramp allows to omit the method.  How do I do that with URLs?

* Tramp also supports multi-hop connections, with a syntax like

    /multi:hop1:hop2:...:hopN:localname

  where hopI looks like hop-method:user@host.  So, for example,

    /multi:telnet:kai@marvin:su:root@localhost:/etc/passwd

  means to use telnet to log in as user kai on marvin, then use
  /bin/su there to become root, then access the file /etc/passwd.

  In the rare case where one would like to access a file/directory
  whose name contains a colon, one can add slashes.  So to access the
  file "foo:bar" in root's homedir, one could use

    /multi:telnet:kai@marvin:su:root@localhost:~/foo:bar

  which is unambiguous.

  Clearly, multi://telnet:kai@marvin/su:root@localhost/foo:bar will
  not work so well...  Hm.  But I could support ~, too, so this would
  become multi://telnet:kai@marvin/su:root@localhost/~/foo:bar which
  is unambiguous.

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