My new Plone 5.2 site is supposed to replace an old CPS site and I want to have at least some URLs of the old site to be the alternatives of their counterparts of the new one. More precisely:
the old site contained some PDF files that could be downloaded directly from their URL, e.g.: .../members/dbitouze/pub/latex/diapositives-cours-d/conference-n-1/downloadFile/file/en-ligne1.pdf
the same file can now be downloaded directly from: .../Members/d--bitouze/pub/latex/diapositives-cours-d/conference-n-1/@@download/file/en-ligne1.pdf
The problem is when I try to add the former as an alternative of the latter (on .../@@redirection-controlpanel), Plone returns the error:
Target path must not be a view
How could I add an alternative URL pointing to a PDF file?
(view part /@@download/... dropped), it works, but oddly: the file is downloaded, not as en-ligne1.pdf, but as conference-n-1 which is nevertheless this en-ligne1.pdf file and considered (at least by Firefox) as a PDF file (it is open with my default PDF viewer).
The error message indicates that the function may want to redirect to an object and not an object's view. The @@ it typically used to indicate a view (in your case in the @@download).
In older Plone versions, it was possible to configure (via portal_types) how object urls (with default method alias) should be handled and for files and images this was by default a kind of download. I am not sure whether this is still possible in Plone 5 and whether you would be ready to go this route.
Almost surely, it is possible to remove the requirement "Target path must not be a view" BUT it will likely require changing or extending code. Apparently, out of the box, you cannot have a view in the url to redirect to.
You may be able to use configuration in your web server to perform the redirects.
but the question remains: is it possible to add an alternative URL that loads the PDF file under its own name?