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digitalmars.D - Fixed, easy to remember URLs for posts

reply Bill Baxter <wbaxter gmail.com> writes:
It would be nice if there were a simple url we could use for referring 
to D newsgroup posts in a fixed way regardless whatever the web 
interface du-jour happens to be.

Something as close as possible to the Xref tag in the headers of the 
posts themselves would be nice.  The Xref looks like:
   digitalmars.com digitalmars.D.announce:6086
So the url could be like:
   http://www.digitalmars.com/ng/digitalmars.D.announce/6086

Then that would just bounce you to the current location of the web 
interface, which currently is:
 
http://www.digitalmars.com/webnews/newsgroups.php?art_group=digitalmars.D&article_id=6086

And then we wouldn't have to worry anymore about article urls being too 
long, or about old links to the specific NG web interface dying.

I suspect one of you PHP/Apache wizards out there could whip this up in 
less than the time it took me to write this post. ;-)

--bb
Dec 11 2006
next sibling parent Justin C Calvarese <technocrat7 gmail.com> writes:
Bill Baxter wrote:

 It would be nice if there were a simple url we could use for referring 
 to D newsgroup posts in a fixed way regardless whatever the web 
 interface du-jour happens to be.
 
 Something as close as possible to the Xref tag in the headers of the 
 posts themselves would be nice.  The Xref looks like:
   digitalmars.com digitalmars.D.announce:6086
 So the url could be like:
   http://www.digitalmars.com/ng/digitalmars.D.announce/6086
 
 Then that would just bounce you to the current location of the web 
 interface, which currently is:
 
 http://www.digitalmars.com/webnews/newsgroups.php?art_group=digitalma
s.D&article_id=6086 
 
 
 And then we wouldn't have to worry anymore about article urls being too 
 long, or about old links to the specific NG web interface dying.
 
 I suspect one of you PHP/Apache wizards out there could whip this up in 
 less than the time it took me to write this post. ;-)
 
 --bb



I like the idea. I'm not sure if we're done testing the "new" web 
interface yet, but it does seem to be a great improvement over the 
previous ones.

Also, the really old web interface links (such as 
http://www.digitalmars.com/drn-bin/wwwnews?digitalmars.D) should be able 
to yield more helpful webpages than:

-------------------------------
Internal Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was 
unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator, jan digitaldaemon.com and 
inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have 
done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.
-------------------------------

-- 
jcc7
Dec 11 2006
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Walter Bright <newshound digitalmars.com> writes:
Bill Baxter wrote:

 It would be nice if there were a simple url we could use for referring 
 to D newsgroup posts in a fixed way regardless whatever the web 
 interface du-jour happens to be.
 
 Something as close as possible to the Xref tag in the headers of the 
 posts themselves would be nice.  The Xref looks like:
   digitalmars.com digitalmars.D.announce:6086
 So the url could be like:
   http://www.digitalmars.com/ng/digitalmars.D.announce/6086
 
 Then that would just bounce you to the current location of the web 
 interface, which currently is:
 
 http://www.digitalmars.com/webnews/newsgroups.php?art_group=digitalma
s.D&article_id=6086 
 
 
 And then we wouldn't have to worry anymore about article urls being too 
 long, or about old links to the specific NG web interface dying.
 
 I suspect one of you PHP/Apache wizards out there could whip this up in 
 less than the time it took me to write this post. ;-)



I use Ddoc macros in the documentation:

NG_cpp = <a 
href="http://www.digitalmars.com/pnews/read.php?server=news.digitalmars.com&group=c++&artnum=$0">c++/$0</a>
NG_cpp_beta = <a 
href="http://www.digitalmars.com/pnews/read.php?server=news.digitalmars.com&group=c++.beta&artnum=$0">c++.beta/$0</a>
NG_cpp_command_line = <a 
href="http://www.digitalmars.com/pnews/read.php?server=news.digitalmars.com&group=c++.command-line&artnum=$0">c++.command-line/$0</a>
NG_D_gnu = <a 
href="http://www.digitalmars.com/pnews/read.php?server=news.digitalmars.com&group=D.gnu&artnum=$0">D.gnu/$0</a>
NG_digitalmars_D = <a 
href="http://www.digitalmars.com/pnews/read.php?server=news.digitalmars.com&group=digitalmars.D&artnum=$0">D/$0</a>
NG_digitalmars_D_bugs = <a 
href="http://www.digitalmars.com/pnews/read.php?server=news.digitalmars.com&group=digitalmars.D.bugs&artnum=$0">D.bugs/$0</a>
NG_digitalmars_D_learn = <a 
href="http://www.digitalmars.com/pnews/read.php?server=news.digitalmars.com&group=digitalmars.D.learn&artnum=$0">D.learn/$0</a>
NG_digitalmars_D_announce = <a 
href="http://www.digitalmars.com/pnews/read.php?server=news.digitalmars.com&group=digitalmars.D.announce&artnum=$0">D.announce/$0</a>

Which eases things considerably. The news archiver will also translate 
the URLs in the postings when creating the archive pages. That doesn't 
work for the web interface, though.
Dec 12 2006
parent reply Stewart Gordon <smjg_1998 yahoo.com> writes:
Walter Bright wrote:

 Bill Baxter wrote:

 It would be nice if there were a simple url we could use for referring 
 to D newsgroup posts in a fixed way regardless whatever the web 
 interface du-jour happens to be.






Good idea!  I'd been meaning to suggest it myself.

<snip>

 I use Ddoc macros in the documentation:




 Which eases things considerably. The news archiver will also translate 
 the URLs in the postings when creating the archive pages. That doesn't 
 work for the web interface, though.



What do you mean by "work for the web interface" exactly?

The point of the suggestion is that it would enable permanent links to D 
newsgroup posts from _anywhere_.  Old web pages, new web pages, emails, 
newsgroup posts (whether read using a web interface, a real newsreader 
or anything in between), user bookmarks, you name it.

Stewart.
Dec 12 2006
parent Walter Bright <newshound digitalmars.com> writes:
Stewart Gordon wrote:

 What do you mean by "work for the web interface" exactly?



The web interface software to access the forums from the web.
Dec 12 2006
prev sibling parent reply "Chris Miller" <chris dprogramming.com> writes:
On Mon, 11 Dec 2006 16:49:31 -0500, Bill Baxter <wbaxter gmail.com> wrote:


 I suspect one of you PHP/Apache wizards out there could whip this up in  
 less than the time it took me to write this post. ;-)



Apache's mod_redirect would be good to use.
Dec 12 2006
parent Alexander Panek <a.panek brainsware.org> writes:
Chris Miller wrote:

 On Mon, 11 Dec 2006 16:49:31 -0500, Bill Baxter <wbaxter gmail.com> wrote:
 

 I suspect one of you PHP/Apache wizards out there could whip this up 
 in less than the time it took me to write this post. ;-)



 Apache's mod_redirect would be good to use.



mod_rewrite would be sufficiant, actually. Now we'd just need someone 
who actually knows how to formulate RewriteRules. :D
Dec 13 2006