why prepend "file://" to abs paths in html output?

[Matt Price <moptop99@gmail.com>]

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in org-html-link local links of the form

"/some/path/to/file"

are rewritten as

"file:///some/path/to/file".

This makes it difficult to write root-relative URL's in the way that one
might expect to be able to (so that export produces links like

<img src="/static/images/unicorn.jpg"/>

Is this really the most desirable behaviour? In html export, at least, I
would think most users would want to allow links of the kind I described.
But this seems like a conscious design decision; cf. these lines from
org-html-link:

        ;; If file path is absolute, prepend it with protocol
        ;; component - "file://".
        (cond
         ((file-name-absolute-p raw-path)
          (setq raw-path (org-export-file-uri raw-path)))
         ((and home use-abs-url)
          (setq raw-path (concat (file-name-as-directory home) raw-path))))

I'm wondering whether a user oculd at least set a defcustom to control this
behaviour.

Thanks,
Matt

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