File URI I18N

File URI Internationalization (and character mapping)

Sometimes, it is desirable to take a web of material and move it to the local file system. This works OK sometimes, but there are problems when the original web (whether from HTTP or a file system) contains characters that are not allowed or supported in the local file system.

There is a two-way mapping between file: URIs and OS paths.

For URI -> OS path, the mapping should attempt to map URI characters into OS path characters, if they are allowed. If not, then a file system encoding may be necessary.

(If the file system has limited capabilities, then the translation may fail; I don't know any way around that.)

For OS path -> URI, it is important to reverse the transformation.