why must <jsp:forward and include filenames be absolute?

["Loving, Kent" <KLoving@Paradigm4.com>]

If I don't use an absolute path name for the "file" argument of the forward
and include directives, the referenced file is not found.  The engine
appears to be looking in a non-existent subdirectory of the current
directory of the JSP page.

My Config:
Linux 2.2.14-5.0
JDK 1.2.2
ApacheJServ 1.1.1b1
gnujsp-1.0.0

Example:
I have a login.jsp and a logintop.html, both in the pagebase directory of
our zone.  login.jsp includes logintop.html.

If I use <%@ include file="/logintop.html" %> then the logintop file is
included correctly, from the <pagebase> directory.
If I use <%@ include file="logintop.html" %> then the engine tries to
include <pagebase>/ourzonename/logintop.html

The same problem exists for the forward directive.

Also, the include directive didn't work at all until I set the pagebase
parameter.  This is sad, because we may want to use JSPs in two different
zones (applications) someday.  I don't see how that's possible since there
is only one pagebase variable and all .jsp files go to the one gnujsp
servlet.

Kent Loving
Sr. Software Engineer
kloving@Paradigm4.com