[OpenAFS] Windows compatibility issues (client 1.4.0003)

[Charles Karney]

Here are two compatibility issues with the AFS 1.4.0003 client on MS
Windows 2000.  Probably both of these are beyond OpenAFS's control.
However I thought I would air them in case there are workarounds.  Both
of them involve the new \\afs\@cell\... syntax for accessing AFS.

(A) A Unix vs Windows compatibility issue.  The URL format

    file:///afs/@cell/...

works OK under Unix.  It would be nice if it did under Windows.  (I
complained about this in July 2001.  Sorry for repeating myself...)  I
note that throwing two extra slashes

    file://///afs/@cell/...

gives something that DOES work with Unix and Windows (IE and Firefox).
However the five consecutive slashes seems like a bad case of
stuttering.

(B) A Windows vs Windows compatibility issue.  The open file dialog in
MS Office 2000 does not understand the \\afs\@cell notation.  If I make
a entry in My Network Places to my home directory in AFS, I can double
click office documents there and open them successfully, edit them, and
save them.  However, if I try to use "Save As" to save them under a
different name and navigate to the same folder from the file dialog I
get "The network name \\AFS\lss.sarnoff.com\u\ckarney could not be
found."

However the \\afs\all\@cell notation DOES work in this case.  Other
(newer?) applications (e.g., Acrobat v 6) work OK with or without the
"all".  Is the problem that MS Office 2000 is too old?  Why is the "all"
necessary in this case?

N.B. Neither of these are serious issues for me.  (I use AFS primarily
under Unix.)  However the fewer little gotchas there are with AFS under
Windows the more likely it will be accepted on this platform.

-- 
Charles Karney <ckarney@sarnoff.com>
Sarnoff Corporation, Princeton, NJ 08543-5300

URL: http://charles.karney.info
Tel: +1 609 734 2312
Fax: +1 609 734 2662