Clickable hyperlinks

[Deborah Swanson]

D'Arcy Cain wrote, on Wednesday, January 04, 2017 5:03 AM
>
> Deborah - please trim your quoted text.

Yes, I will. Some lists want to have it all to review in one message, some want 
it trimmed to just the lines you are responding to. I was just waiting to see 
what this list wants.

> On 2017-01-04 04:32 AM, Deborah Swanson wrote:
<snip>

> > But we aren't trying to print strings here, the point is to produce
> > clickable links. I didn't enclose them with quotes because I didn't
> > see any point in printing plain text when I wanted
> clickable links. I
>
> I'm not sure what your links are composed of but mine all look like
> sequences of characters or "strings."  It sounds like you are
> trying to
> make URL a first class type like strings. integers, floats, etc.  I
> can't think of any language that treats URLs as first class objects.
> Even HTML needs quotes:
>
>    <A HREF="http://...">Go here</A>

It seemed reasonable that you might be able to print urls, which is why I tried 
the experiment with all of Steven's suggested formats. But I was highly 
skeptical that any would work without some kind of modifiers to a bare print 
statement.

> > actually didn't understand why you thought I should print
> them, but it
>
> You want to output them to something.  That often involves
> printing them
> to a particular handler.

Yes, that's one of the things I would expect if we could print them.

> > never would have occurred to me that you wanted me to print out a
> > bunch of silly plain text strings, apparently just for the
> heck of it.
>
> Is that really what you got from his message?

Please forgive me, and I hope Steven forgives me too, but I was sick to death 
of all the beating on a dead horse (using Python to make clickable links in a 
console, any console). I'd taken heart when he first suggested his print 
experiment, because it was a plausible approach. But I lost my temper when he 
upbraided me in this message for failing to enclose my strings in quotes, in a 
most patronizing kind of way, when printing out plain text was absolutely 
nowhere on the progress toward a solution scale. I've been quite impressed with 
Steven's knowledge and talent, and after fending off the throng of unseeing 
naysayers all afternoon, it was just a little too much. I really should have 
closed my email reader hours before I read and replied to this message. 
Shoulda, coulda, woulda.

<snip>

> I can assure you that FF prints the string at some point.  It
> may wrap
> it in HTML tags first but printing is what it does.  Also,
> the URLs are
> stored as strings.  SQLite has no URL type.  If it did then it would
> still store it as a string somewhere.  PostGreSQL would let
> you create a
> URL type if you wanted but you would still need to wrap it in quotes
> (single in this case) when you created the entry.

I have no doubt that some variant of printing is involved. Transporting urls to 
the internet is an output process. FF's sqlite implementation does store urls 
as a text field in at least 2 tables. I would be interested in how FF takes 
those text urls and opens web pages with them, although I've learned and 
figured out just today some ways that Python can also do it. Turns out 
clickable links were a red herring.

If Steven's original suggestion included anything but a bare print statement, 
like the use of a special specifier or linking the print statement to some 
module, the use of quoted strings would have at least been worthy of 
consideration. But we all know what print("http://www.wherever.com") would 
print, and it would be utterly worthless for the purpose at hand. Trying the 
print statement without the quotes was a least a possibility, if there was any 
awareness in the print code of urls and what to do with them. That was the 
whole point of this fishing expedition, as I saw it. To see if there was any 
undocumented or narrowly known-of features in the print code.

<snip>
> In all the messages in this thread I still don't understand what this
> "teensy advantage" is supposed to be.  Do you want to be able
> to do this:
>
>    make_web_link(http://...)
>
> instead of:
>
>    make_web_link("http://...")
>
> --
> D'Arcy J.M. Cain
> System Administrator, Vex.Net
> http://www.Vex.Net/ IM:darcy at Vex.Net
> VoIP: sip:darcy at Vex.Net

You probably didn't see my oneliner on the "why do it" part in the swarm of 
messages on this thread yesterday. In it I mentioned that the use would be to 
open urls in the data I'm working with while I'm debugging the code that uses 
them. I want to see what pages they open, without having to leave my IDE. 
(Obviously I'd have to open another .py file, but that would be easier and 
quicker than the alternatives.) I never intended my original question to be any 
more than a frivolous toss out into the sea, to see if anyone knew an answer. I 
was flat out astonished when it blew up into the mini-monster that it did.

Is make_web_link("http://...") valid python code? That's exactly the kind of 
answer I was looking for, and I will try it (or look it up if it needs 
something imported) as soon as I send this off. Thank you.

It's possible you caught just the tail end of a hot mess without seeing all the 
irrational vitriol and nonsense that led up to this message. Lucky you.

Deborah