Why Nautilus and GNOME applications use URIs?

[Christopher Lees]

On Fri, 2010-06-04 at 12:00 +0100,
ubuntu-devel-discuss-request at lists.ubuntu.com wrote:
> 
> > Is there any advantage to using URI instead of the 
> > local address?
> 
> I guess, just as the name says, they are universal accross different
> machines, while local paths are generally different. Nonetheless a
> standard implementation agnostic relative local path like ~/net might be
> usefull.
> 
> Regards,
> Christian

True, but I don't see ~/net solving any problems that ~/.gvfs couldn't
already handle. Besides, how often do you drag and drop between local
and remote X programs? Versus how often you drag and drop between local
Gnome and local non-Gnome programs?