gnome-vfs & HTTP proxy settings

[John Spray <jcspray icculus org>]

When using gnome-vfs on http:// URIs, I understand that it transparently
uses the proxy settings in the gconf database.  Independent of these
settings, is it possible to configure gnome-vfs to use a proxy at
runtime?

The motivation is to allow my application to let the user set a proxy
even if they are not in a Gnome environment (and thus don't have the
gconf settings daemon running).  Would I be better off with libcurl for
this kind of flexibility?

Regards,
John