WP-A: A New URL Shortener

[Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn]

Chris Angelico wrote:

> On Wed, Mar 16, 2016 at 9:53 AM, Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn
> <PointedEars at web.de> wrote:

Attribution *line*, _not_ attribution novel.

>> […] I cannot be sure because I have not thought this through, but with
                                ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>> aliases for common second-level domains, and with text compression, it
>> should be possible to do this without a database.
> 
> How? If you shorten URLs, you have to be able to reconstruct the long
> ones. Compression can't do that to arbitrary lengths. Somewhere there
> needs to be the rest of the information.

First of all, you quoted me out of context.  Please do not do that again.

Second, do you even read what you reply to?  See the markings above.

And as for second-level domains, consider for example “t.c” instead of 
“twitter.com” as part of the short URI.
 
>> And with the exception of Twitter-ish sites that place a limit on message
>> length, there really is *no need* for shorter URIs nowadays.  (HTTP)
>> clients and servers are capable of processing really long ones [1];
>> electronic communications media and related software, too [2].  And data
>> storage space as well as data transmission has become exceptionally
>> inexpensive.  A few less bytes there do not count.
> 
> There are many places where there are limits (hard or soft) on message
> lengths. Some of us still use MUDs and 80-character line limits.

See above.  Covered by [2].

But speaking of length limits, the lines in your postings are too long, 
according to Usenet convention.  I had to correct the quotations so that 
they remained readable when word-wrapped.

> Business cards or other printed media need to be transcribed by hand.
> Dictation of URLs becomes virtually impossible when they're
> arbitrarily long.

(You are not reading at all, are you?)  This is covered by that:
 
>> Instead, there *is* a need for *concise*, *semantic* URIs that Web
>> (service) users can *easily* *remember*.  It is the duty of the original
>> Web authors∕developers to make sure that there are, and I think that no
>> kind of automation is going to ease or replace thoughtful path design
>> anytime soon (but please, prove me wrong):
> 
> Sure...... if you control the destination server. What if you're
> engaging in scholarly discussion about someone else's content? You
> can't change the canonical URLs, and you can't simply copy their
> content to your own server (either for licensing reasons or to
> guarantee that the official version hasn't been tampered with).

That is why I said it is the duty of the original authors/developers.  It is 
a community effort, and it is not going to happen overnight.  But evading 
the problem with unreliable replacements such as “short URLs” is not going 
to solve it either.
 
> So URL shorteners are invaluable tools.

IBTD.

-- 
PointedEars

Twitter: @PointedEars2
Please do not cc me. / Bitte keine Kopien per E-Mail.