Question

Obviously you wouldn't want to do this on a internet wiki, and this is a bit of an evil microsoft oriented question. But on our corporate intranet I want to link to files on a shared network drive (windows share available to everyone).

I can do this using a URL with a file:// protocol. But I have to do some clever conversion for file names with spaces. So for example I can link to \\shared\directory name\file name.doc by putting the URL file://\\shared\direct~1\filena~1.doc. This works, but it takes a bit of time and few failed edits to get the links right.

Is there a quick way to convert windows paths with spaces into these old DOS style paths without spaces? Is there are easier / better way to link to shared network files?

(Note I don't want to add the file as an attachment. I'm not allowed to move the file to any new doc management system. I just want to link to it)

-- HarryWood - 16 Aug 2005

Answer

The SlashFilenamePlugin does what you want, i think. It works for me, anyway

-- JosMaccabiani - 16 Aug 2005

Thanks Jos. That does appear to be exactly what I'm looking for, although it means I'll have to pester the administrator to install it.

However in the meantime I realised that in fact twiki allows you to slap in normal HTML anchor tags. Hadn't realised this. So I can make links of the form <A HREF="file://\\shared\directory name\file name.doc">link text</A> (use the path with spaces). Would make for more readable wikitext if we install that plugin though.

-- HarryWood - 19 Aug 2005

A related link: ninotech path copy is a simple windows shell extension which lets you grab the full 'internet path' complete with 'file://' protocol for any file, just by right clicking it. It doesn't put '~1's in the path, but even better, it converts the spaces to URL escape characters.

-- HarryWood - 31 Aug 2005