It would be nice if there were a simple url we could use for referring to D newsgroup posts in a fixed way regardless whatever the web interface du-jour happens to be.

Something as close as possible to the Xref tag in the headers of the posts themselves would be nice.  The Xref looks like:
  digitalmars.com digitalmars.D.announce:6086
So the url could be like:
  http://www.digitalmars.com/ng/digitalmars.D.announce/6086

Then that would just bounce you to the current location of the web interface, which currently is:

http://www.digitalmars.com/webnews/newsgroups.php?art_group=digitalmars.D&article_id=6086

And then we wouldn't have to worry anymore about article urls being too long, or about old links to the specific NG web interface dying.

I suspect one of you PHP/Apache wizards out there could whip this up in less than the time it took me to write this post. ;-)

--bb

Bill Baxter wrote:
> It would be nice if there were a simple url we could use for referring to D newsgroup posts in a fixed way regardless whatever the web interface du-jour happens to be.
> 
> Something as close as possible to the Xref tag in the headers of the posts themselves would be nice.  The Xref looks like:
>   digitalmars.com digitalmars.D.announce:6086
> So the url could be like:
>   http://www.digitalmars.com/ng/digitalmars.D.announce/6086
> 
> Then that would just bounce you to the current location of the web interface, which currently is:
> 
> http://www.digitalmars.com/webnews/newsgroups.php?art_group=digitalmars.D&article_id=6086 
> 
> 
> And then we wouldn't have to worry anymore about article urls being too long, or about old links to the specific NG web interface dying.
> 
> I suspect one of you PHP/Apache wizards out there could whip this up in less than the time it took me to write this post. ;-)
> 
> --bb

I like the idea. I'm not sure if we're done testing the "new" web interface yet, but it does seem to be a great improvement over the previous ones.

Also, the really old web interface links (such as http://www.digitalmars.com/drn-bin/wwwnews?digitalmars.D) should be able to yield more helpful webpages than:

-------------------------------
Internal Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator, jan@digitaldaemon.com and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.
-------------------------------

-- 
jcc7

Bill Baxter wrote:
> It would be nice if there were a simple url we could use for referring to D newsgroup posts in a fixed way regardless whatever the web interface du-jour happens to be.
> 
> Something as close as possible to the Xref tag in the headers of the posts themselves would be nice.  The Xref looks like:
>   digitalmars.com digitalmars.D.announce:6086
> So the url could be like:
>   http://www.digitalmars.com/ng/digitalmars.D.announce/6086
> 
> Then that would just bounce you to the current location of the web interface, which currently is:
> 
> http://www.digitalmars.com/webnews/newsgroups.php?art_group=digitalmars.D&article_id=6086 
> 
> 
> And then we wouldn't have to worry anymore about article urls being too long, or about old links to the specific NG web interface dying.
> 
> I suspect one of you PHP/Apache wizards out there could whip this up in less than the time it took me to write this post. ;-)

I use Ddoc macros in the documentation:

NG_cpp = <a href="http://www.digitalmars.com/pnews/read.php?server=news.digitalmars.com&group=c++&artnum=$0">c++/$0</a>
NG_cpp_beta = <a href="http://www.digitalmars.com/pnews/read.php?server=news.digitalmars.com&group=c++.beta&artnum=$0">c++.beta/$0</a>
NG_cpp_command_line = <a href="http://www.digitalmars.com/pnews/read.php?server=news.digitalmars.com&group=c++.command-line&artnum=$0">c++.command-line/$0</a>
NG_D_gnu = <a href="http://www.digitalmars.com/pnews/read.php?server=news.digitalmars.com&group=D.gnu&artnum=$0">D.gnu/$0</a>
NG_digitalmars_D = <a href="http://www.digitalmars.com/pnews/read.php?server=news.digitalmars.com&group=digitalmars.D&artnum=$0">D/$0</a>
NG_digitalmars_D_bugs = <a href="http://www.digitalmars.com/pnews/read.php?server=news.digitalmars.com&group=digitalmars.D.bugs&artnum=$0">D.bugs/$0</a>
NG_digitalmars_D_learn = <a href="http://www.digitalmars.com/pnews/read.php?server=news.digitalmars.com&group=digitalmars.D.learn&artnum=$0">D.learn/$0</a>
NG_digitalmars_D_announce = <a href="http://www.digitalmars.com/pnews/read.php?server=news.digitalmars.com&group=digitalmars.D.announce&artnum=$0">D.announce/$0</a>

Which eases things considerably. The news archiver will also translate the URLs in the postings when creating the archive pages. That doesn't work for the web interface, though.

On Mon, 11 Dec 2006 16:49:31 -0500, Bill Baxter <wbaxter@gmail.com> wrote:

> I suspect one of you PHP/Apache wizards out there could whip this up in less than the time it took me to write this post. ;-)

Apache's mod_redirect would be good to use.

Walter Bright wrote:
> Bill Baxter wrote:
>> It would be nice if there were a simple url we could use for referring to D newsgroup posts in a fixed way regardless whatever the web interface du-jour happens to be.

Good idea!  I'd been meaning to suggest it myself.

<snip>
> I use Ddoc macros in the documentation:
<snip>
> Which eases things considerably. The news archiver will also translate the URLs in the postings when creating the archive pages. That doesn't work for the web interface, though.

What do you mean by "work for the web interface" exactly?

The point of the suggestion is that it would enable permanent links to D newsgroup posts from _anywhere_.  Old web pages, new web pages, emails, newsgroup posts (whether read using a web interface, a real newsreader or anything in between), user bookmarks, you name it.

Stewart.

Stewart Gordon wrote:
> What do you mean by "work for the web interface" exactly?

The web interface software to access the forums from the web.

Chris Miller wrote:
> On Mon, 11 Dec 2006 16:49:31 -0500, Bill Baxter <wbaxter@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> I suspect one of you PHP/Apache wizards out there could whip this up in less than the time it took me to write this post. ;-)
> 
> Apache's mod_redirect would be good to use.

mod_rewrite would be sufficiant, actually. Now we'd just need someone who actually knows how to formulate RewriteRules. :D