“There’s only madness down that road.”
My solution to the url.el parts of Vasilij Schneidermann excellent writeup would, as always, be:
diff --git a/lisp/url/url.el b/lisp/url/url.el
index b4ece5faeb..8ea491efb0 100644
--- a/lisp/url/url.el
+++ b/lisp/url/url.el
@@ -191,7 +191,8 @@ url-retrieve-internal
(setq url (url-generic-parse-url url)))
(if (not (functionp callback))
(error "Must provide a callback function to url-retrieve"))
- (unless (url-type url)
+ (when (or (not (url-type url))
+ (not (member (url-type url) '("http" "https" "file"))))
(error "Bad url: %s" (url-recreate-url url)))
(setf (url-silent url) silent)
(setf (url-asynchronous url) url-asynchronous)
(Along with making redirects saner, of course.)