Connections to https: URLs -- IE expert help needed

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I've added to R-devel the ability to use download.file() and url() to 
https: URLs, *only* if --internet2 is used on Windows.

This uses the Internet Explorer internals, and only works if the 
certificate is accepted (so e.g. does not work for 
https://svn.r-project.org).

Now I use IE (and Windows for that matter) only when really necessary, and 
Firefox has simple ways to permanently accept non-verifiable certificates. 
I would be grateful if someone who is much more familiar with IE could 
write a note explaining how to deal with this that we could add to the 
rw-FAQ.

To forestall the inevitable question: there are no plans to add https: 
support on any other platform, but it is something that would make a nice 
project for a user contribution.  The current internal code is based on 
likxml2, and that AFAICS still does not have https: support.

Generally (i.e. not in particular response to Brian but related to this
thread)

An alternative is to use RCurl and leave HTTPS and a host
of other protocols and details to an external library (e.g. libcurl,
libwww, etc.) and an R package that interfaces to it.

If we want the facilities to be accessible via the connections
interface, then we can make that API extensible by packages.
Jeff Horner has a proposal on that.

Generally, it is important if R is to continue to evolve that the R
internals become extensible by package developers so that we can do some
new experiments and provide alternative implementations of the basic
structures rather than being tied to the existing representation.
An object oriented framework underlying the R source code would enable
this and would solve numerous problems that have arisen recently
and I strongly suspect many more that will arise.

 D.


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Duncan Temple Lang                    duncan at wald.ucdavis.edu
Department of Statistics              work:  (530) 752-4782
4210 Mathematical Sciences Building   fax:   (530) 752-7099
One Shields Ave.
University of California at Davis
Davis,
CA 95616,
USA
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