Some URI schemes leave unspecified important aspects of how to interpret
URIs of those schemes. For example, it is unspecified for “file”
URLs how to map the byte sequences that constitute the path segments of a
“file” URL to filenames on a given platform: The UNO environment
always assumes that path segments of “file” URLs represent
UTF-8–encoded strings (which have to be mapped to filenames in a
platform-specific way), while other applications typically assume that path
segments of “file” URLs directly represent a platform's
byte-sequence filenames. This interface offers methods to translate between
such internal URIs (e.g., UTF-8–encoded “file”
URLs used within the UNO environment) and external URIs (e.g.,
byte-sequence–oriented “file” URLs used by other
applications). Typically, only “file” URLs are affected by this
translation.
Since the translation process is based on URI schemes, relative URI
references (that do not include a scheme) are left unmodified by the
translation process.