Parse an MCP file URI or plain path into a normalized PathBuf.
Handles standard file URIs (file:///path), two-slash drive letter URIs (file://C:/...),
pipe drive delimiters (file:///C|/..., file://C|/...), percent-encoding (%20, %7C), and plain paths.
Compare two paths for logical identity.
On Windows, normalizes verbatim prefixes via dunce and compares disk prefixes and components case-insensitively.
On non-Windows, compares paths directly.
Strips base from path. On Windows, if standard strip_prefix fails,
performs case-insensitive component comparison to support Windows case-preserving filesystems.