Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! - weekly Python news and links (Dec 2)

[chriskreuzer at hotmail.com]

David Fraser wrote:
> Rocco Moretti wrote:

<snip>

> > I'm sorry I'm not able to give a direct URL, but it seems they've
> > switched over to a horrendously long, stateful URL system which
doesn't
> > lend itself to direct linkage.
>
> Doesn't seem stateful to me, just has different thread / message ids
to
> the old system:

Using different message IDs is bad.
Usenet already has a header for this: Message ID.

>
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_thread/thread/1db72429a2b05ce0/2c1679d365ffe9dd#2c1679d365ffe9dd
>
> The syntax is thread/$threadid/$messageid#$messageid
> At least for me, these URLs are transferable between computers /
browsers

But if Google ever moves away from maintaining a Usenet archive, then
any links involving Google IDs will be broken. This happened with
DejaNews and will happen with links to old URLs with the GG1 (Google
Groups 1) system (unless they maintain continuity). Even then, all was
not lost because you could extract the Usenet message ID from the URL.
It looks like you can't do this with the new GG2 message references.

> You can also access the message directly:
>
>
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/msg/2c1679d365ffe9dd

I would also *always* add the Usenet message ID.
This timeproofs it against any future changes.

Christopher