As you may know, it is rather complicated to develop a workflow on Windows and use it on Linux. One way to make this possible is to avoid usage of OS path like C:\Document and Setting\ in Windows or /home in Linux and use a more standard path definition like URL.
In such a way a file in "C:\local\file.txt" in Windows and "/local/file.txt" in Linux can share the same URL "file:/local/file.txt" if the Windows KNIME installation is on the C: partition.
Unfortunately a lot of file readers are using OS path and not URL type file access
It would be nice to ban OS like path in KNIME developments and even in general and impose URL type for file access which is a more modern way to access dynamic and static files.
First, most file readers already use URLs and not simple path. Second, under Windows you must encode the drive. I know a lot of users that do not have their workflows and/or data files on drive C but somewhere else. As soon as you store the driver letter it cannot be used on other operating systems any more.
I agree with you: Most but not all of them and especially in vendor’s add ins. Sadly, it's brake everything. Anyway, it would be nice to make URLs as standard and forget about OS Path. Another alternative would be to use relative URL path. Even better would be to combine in an easy manner variables with relative path. Then nothing in you workflow would be bound anymore to the OS except the variables if they need a drive letter.
Several times, I managed to developed workflows compatible with both platforms Lunix and Windows using drop directories or text input to avoid file reading where no URL was possible. Still this remains complicated, but not impossible. If OS path disappear this exercise would be easier.
Again thanks for the developments and the very nice tools you provide.