Why does the new File(URI) constructor restricts the uri to hierarchical?

[Paulo Levi]

I have a mapping from uri to real files, and to i was hoping to use that
constructor to do the work, however it says it only accepts,

"absolute, hierarchical URI with a scheme equal to "file""

Now, many times on html files the uri would be the second notion of
hierarchical from the javadoc

"A *hierarchical* URI is either an absolute URI whose scheme-specific part
begins with a slash character, *or a relative URI, that is, a URI that does
not specify a scheme.*"

As in a relative file for instance. But the constructor will never accept
this since they obviously have no schema. I was hoping to fake it by
introducing the file schema on uris that don't have it and joining the
current file parent directory to make a relative uri absolute.

But why doesn't the constructor allow this?
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