Link to file on network

Is it possible to insert a hyperlink to a document on my network into comments or description? Often times we have an evolving document that we don't want to attach to the item but we want to link to as a hyperlink using file://  it doesn't seem to work properly since there are spaces in some (a lot) of our path names as well as I'd have to rely on users to replace the backslashes with front slashes if copying the path directly. This wouldn't be a problem except that one of the projects I've set up (outside of my development projects) is for a team type meeting which includes people who aren't technically inclined and for them to figure this out would be a bit bothersome. Also explaining that a space is equal to %20 would confuse them as well. Is there any easy solution to this? On top of that if I do go through and replace all spaces and slashes, it seems like an extra forward slash is added after file:// so clicking the link does nothing. Am I missing something or is this a combination of a bug and a feature request?