Links / URLs in a usenet message

D

Daan

Not directly related to html, but I was curious about the following.
When you want to include the URL of a page in a usenet message, some
people add less-then and greater-then signs to the URL (like this:
<http://www.example.com>), others don't (like this:
http://www.example.com). What is the meaning of this, if any, or what is
accepted etiquette for the use of them?
 
K

Kris

Daan said:
Not directly related to html, but I was curious about the following.
When you want to include the URL of a page in a usenet message, some
people add less-then and greater-then signs to the URL (like this:
<http://www.example.com>), others don't (like this:
http://www.example.com). What is the meaning of this, if any, or what is
accepted etiquette for the use of them?

AFAIK, those characters cannot be part of a URL, so they are the perfect
delimiters for a URL in a line of text. Can you spot where the following
URL is supposed to end?

foo bar foo bar http://foo.bar/foo, bar.
 
N

Neal

Not directly related to html, but I was curious about the following.
When you want to include the URL of a page in a usenet message, some
people add less-then and greater-then signs to the URL (like this:
<http://www.example.com>), others don't (like this:
http://www.example.com). What is the meaning of this, if any, or what is
accepted etiquette for the use of them?


My newsreader allows either - but the < and > really don't add anything. I
would simply add the URL without the brackets.

BTW, a better way to link is http://www.example.com/ - the terminal / will
be added anyhow, so including it saves a bit of time and bandwidth.
 
L

Lois

:
but the < and > really don't add anything.

One time after I'd sent out an email with a URL in it to a mailing list, one
person wrote back to say that she hadn't been able to get the link to open
when she clicked on it because it had a period at the end. I'd put it at the
end of a sentence, like this link: www.example.com/page.html. She suggested
that I put < and > around future links in emails to avoid that problem.

I'm guessing that the period wouldn't affect most users (?), but it did
affect at least one.

Lois
 
D

Dave Patton

Not directly related to html, but I was curious about the following.
When you want to include the URL of a page in a usenet message, some
people add less-then and greater-then signs to the URL (like this:
<http://www.example.com>), others don't (like this:
http://www.example.com). What is the meaning of this, if any, or what is
accepted etiquette for the use of them?

http://www.w3.org/Addressing/rfc1738.txt
RFC 1738 Uniform Resource Locators (URL) December 1994
APPENDIX: Recommendations for URLs in Context
URIs, including URLs, are intended to be transmitted through
protocols which provide a context for their interpretation.

In some cases, it will be necessary to distinguish URLs from other
possible data structures in a syntactic structure. In this case, is
recommended that URLs be preceeded with a prefix consisting of the
characters "URL:". For example, this prefix may be used to
distinguish URLs from other kinds of URIs.

In addition, there are many occasions when URLs are included in other
kinds of text; examples include electronic mail, USENET news
messages, or printed on paper. In such cases, it is convenient to
have a separate syntactic wrapper that delimits the URL and separates
it from the rest of the text, and in particular from punctuation
marks that might be mistaken for part of the URL. For this purpose,
is recommended that angle brackets ("<" and ">"), along with the
prefix "URL:", be used to delimit the boundaries of the URL. This
wrapper does not form part of the URL and should not be used in
contexts in which delimiters are already specified.
 
N

Neal

:
but the < and > really don't add anything.

One time after I'd sent out an email with a URL in it to a mailing list,
one
person wrote back to say that she hadn't been able to get the link to
open
when she clicked on it because it had a period at the end. I'd put it at
the
end of a sentence, like this link: www.example.com/page.html. She
suggested
that I put < and > around future links in emails to avoid that problem.

I'm guessing that the period wouldn't affect most users (?), but it did
affect at least one.

It can. But I have the habit of putting a space around the URLs anyhow. So
even if I end a phrase with http://www.example.com/ , I'll add a space to
keep the punctuation out of it. Same with a sentence ending with
http://www.example.com/ . Seems to work universally AFAIK.
 
J

Joel Shepherd

Lois said:
:
but the < and > really don't add anything.

One time after I'd sent out an email with a URL in it to a mailing list, one
person wrote back to say that she hadn't been able to get the link to open
when she clicked on it because it had a period at the end.

Alright, newsreader check.

If your newsreader highlights the following as a link does it take you
to a custom 404 page: http://www.hazegray.org/danfs/yard/yn4.htm.

If your newsreader highlights the following as a link does it take you
to a custom 404 page: <http://www.hazegray.org/danfs/yard/yn4.htm>.

Interested but slightly bored minds want to know.

--
Joel.

http://www.cv6.org/
"May she also say with just pride:
I have done the State some service."
 
D

Dave Patton

Alright, newsreader check.

If your newsreader highlights the following as a link does it take you
to a custom 404 page: http://www.hazegray.org/danfs/yard/yn4.htm.

If your newsreader highlights the following as a link does it take you
to a custom 404 page: <http://www.hazegray.org/danfs/yard/yn4.htm>.

Interested but slightly bored minds want to know.

My newsreader, Xnews, doesn't highlight either of them,
but both are handled properly(as the URL, not the 404 page)
if I click on them.
 
T

Toby Inkster

Daan said:
Not directly related to html, but I was curious about the following.
When you want to include the URL of a page in a usenet message, some
people add less-then and greater-then signs to the URL

There is certainly an advantage of using '<URL:' and '>' to delimit a URL:
many smart readers can use these hints to know where the URL begins and
ends, even over line breaks. For example, in Opera you have <URL:http://www.
google.com/> (with the line break!) and still be able to click on it and
get to Google!
 
A

Arondelle

Joel said:
Alright, newsreader check.

Netscape Mail 7.1
If your newsreader highlights the following as a link does it take you
to a custom 404 page: http://www.hazegray.org/danfs/yard/yn4.htm.

No. It takes me to a page on the "Butternut"
If your newsreader highlights the following as a link does it take you
to a custom 404 page: <http://www.hazegray.org/danfs/yard/yn4.htm>.

No. It *also* me to a page on the "Butternut"
Interested but slightly bored minds want to know.

Arondelle
 
S

SpaceGirl

Joel said:
Alright, newsreader check.

If your newsreader highlights the following as a link does it take you
to a custom 404 page: http://www.hazegray.org/danfs/yard/yn4.htm.

If your newsreader highlights the following as a link does it take you
to a custom 404 page: <http://www.hazegray.org/danfs/yard/yn4.htm>.

Interested but slightly bored minds want to know.

Both worked.

--


x theSpaceGirl (miranda)

# lead designer @ http://www.dhnewmedia.com #
# remove NO SPAM to email, or use form on website #
 
S

Sam Hughes

Not directly related to html, but I was curious about the following.
When you want to include the URL of a page in a usenet message, some
people add less-then and greater-then signs to the URL (like this:
<http://www.example.com>), others don't (like this:
http://www.example.com). What is the meaning of this, if any, or

I get sick and tired of worrying about whether browsers will include
characters like commas and periods in URLs, so I put them in angle
brackets. Actually, in _every_ instance in which I write out a URL in
text, I put angle brackets around it, becuase I consider it to be good
style. In fact, I would say that it _is_ good style to use angle
brackets, but that's mainly because I like using them myself :).
what is
accepted etiquette for the use of them?

There is no accepted etiquette. For there to be an etiquette, or
netiquette, for their use, there would have to be zealots inflicting this
netiquette upon other users. And there are none, because it's not an
issue :). Just make sure you disconnect trailing punctuation from
messing up URLs like they do in this one:
http://www.allmyfaqs.com/faq.pl.
 
J

Jukka K. Korpela

Neal said:
BTW, a better way to link is http://www.example.com/ - the terminal /
will be added anyhow, so including it saves a bit of time and
bandwidth.

No, http://www.example.com and http://www.example.com/ are completely
equivalent. This is different from http://www.example.com/foo
which may result in an unneeded negotiation between the browser and the
server, if it will actually get mapped to http://www.example.com/foo/

For an explanation see
http://www.htmlhelp.com/faq/html/basics.html#url-slash
 
J

Jukka K. Korpela

Dave Patton said:
RFC 1738 Uniform Resource Locators (URL) December 1994

It was obsoleted in matters of generic URL syntax (which we are
discussing here) in August 1998 by RFC 2396.

RFC 2396 takes a somewhat different position to "URLs in context", see
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/rfc/2396/full.html#E

In practice, just leaving white space around a URL is fine. However if
you need to spit a URL across lines, as in Usenet postings when the URL
is long, then the <...> syntax, or some other delimiters, is needed.
There's an example of such usage in RFC2396:

Yes, Jim, I found it under "http://www.w3.org/Addressing/",
but you can probably pick it up from <ftp://ds.internic.
net/rfc/>. Note the warning in <http://www.ics.uci.edu/pub/
ietf/uri/historical.html#WARNING>.

which isn't such a great example, since it is hardly useful to deploy
_different_ delimiters, and those particular URLs could each be written
on one line.
 

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