Re: @ if html uref suggestion

[Marc Herbert]

On Fri, 10 Nov 2000, Eli Zaretskii wrote:

> A shortened URL will only work if there are clearly visible links from
> the parent page all the way to the target page.  Many times, these
> links either don't exist or are hard to spot, because the text of the
> links is not unequivocal enough.

I do aggree: my suggestion is not useful when dealing with the "many
times" badly designed web sites. The problem is, there are some well
designed web sites out there ! 

Example : I'am talking about Gigabit Ethernet, and I want to point to
the Vitesse web site:

@uref{
        http://www.xaqti.com/products/gigabit.htm,
        http://www.xaqti.com/,
        Vitesse
} 

 - The first link is more direct and more useful in the HTML version.
 - The second link is more elegant and even more practical to use in
the paper version (less typing and only two clicks added). 


> Personally, I really get pissed off when I find out that a URL in a
> document is incorrect or inaccurate. 

That's another good argument in favor of my suggestion, thanks for it! 
 -> as paper documents have a longer lifetime than HTML ones, it's a
good idea to use in them more general URLs than in HTML, because more
general URLs also have a longer lifetime than more specific ones. 


> > and then they take too much time to type. 
> 
> Note that the feature you are asking for doesn't save any typing: you
> type both the long URL *and* the short one.

For sure, but I was still talking about the *paper reader* typing the
URL (with her mittens) and not the writer. Documents writers are used
to spend lot of time to make reading more efficient. 


> That said, I don't mind to add the feature if it is useful for
> someone.  Please consider submitting a description of the feature for
> the Texinfo manual with rationale for it; I think it won't be easy for
> us to explain why it is needed.
> 

OK, I will write something. I will "patch" the existing paragraph. 
Should I send this to this same list (bug-texinfo) or somewhere else ?
Is there some formal procedure for this described somewhere ? 

 The footnote idea from Akim is also interesting. But quite
orthogonal. In fact I see two problems with "URLs on paper" : 
 - where and how should they be displayed ? (parentheses,
footnotes,...)
 - can they be different from the one in the HTML version ?

Sincerely,

-- 
Marc Herbert
"Si Dieu existe, c'est une affaire sérieuse. Et s'il n'existe pas... c'est
encore plus grave" - Bono