Re: @ if html uref suggestion

[Marc Herbert]

On Fri, 10 Nov 2000, Eli Zaretskii wrote:

> > From: Marc Herbert <address@hidden>
> > Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2000 11:29:14 +0100 (CET)
> > 
> > Then there is a wished functionnality : when the URL is too long.  So
> > in HTML I want just a short word in visible text but with a long and
> > precise URL hidden behind, and in DVI I want a shorter URL
> 
> Why does it make sense to have an incorrect URL in the DVI output?
> Not every page has links to all of the child URLs, so a user who reads
> the printed version might not have any easy way to get to the page you
> want.  So truncating the URL might simply invalidate it.
> 

 Maybe you did not understand me. I am not talking about automatic URL
truncating, but rather about a functionality that would allow writers
to optionally and manually provide an alternative and shorter URL for
paper outputs than for HTML anchor targets. And this thanks to an yet
unused argument.

 Sometimes it's good thing to provide a direct access to a specific
child page in the HTML version, and simultaneously a shorter and more
general URL in paper outputs. This shorter URL can be a truncated
version, or even anything else. 
 It may be quicker for the *paper* reader with her mittens to type a
short URL and then access the child page by clicking. She will
naturally know where to look for the right child page(s) thanks to the
context provided in the rest of the document.

 I find that this kind of situation occurs quite often in the document
I am currently writing. And when it does not... hey wait : I am just
proposing an optional, backward-compatible feature !


> If the problem with long URLs in DVI output is that TeX cannot
> hyphenate them, perhaps we should augment texinfo.tex 

The hyphenation problem is indeed a correlated problem, for which I
would also be glad to get a solution. But long URLs in text are IMHO a
bad thing anyway. First I find them ugly, typographically speaking,
and then they take too much time to type. 


Sincerely,

-- 
Marc Herbert