mhonarc-users

Re: mailto: links

1998-08-20 00:09:19
On August 19, 1998 at 16:33, Al Gilman wrote:

When you encounter <ehood(_at_)hydra(_dot_)acs(_dot_)uci(_dot_)edu> in the 
body of a
message it looks syntactically just like a message-ID.  Ah hah,
I'll go look in the index.  No such message.  
No <a href="http://path.to.archive/page";> is generated.  What if 
these guys were to fall through to <a href="mailto:etc.>?

The problem is MHonArc will do rechecks during additions or
edits.  I.e. Initially, a message ID may not be present.  But
once it is, MHonArc will link to it (when message with reference
is edited).

A thing to note about MHonArc is that it does not assume
a chronological order of messages.  It is designed to take messages
in any order and sort things out for you.  This is very useful for
mailing lists and news groups where routing delays can change the
order messages are received.  It is commom to see a reply to a
message before you even seen the original message.


I don't see how generating mailto: links conflicts with linking
to referenced messages, because without loss of valid mailto:'s
you can try on the hypothesis of message-ID first.  When that
fails, you can go on the hypothesis of mailbox.  Reasonable sites
don't generate message-IDs that duplicate their mailboxes, so
there is no conflict.  You only need to treat something in
mailbox syntax as a message-ID when you can confirm that a
message with that ID exists.  You'll generate some bogus
mailto's.

See above.  I.e. MHonArc does not assume that all applicable IDs
may be present when checking for IDs.


But these will be obvious to the naked eye and real people won't
click on 'em.  And you won't miss any prior-message hyperlinks
and you won't miss any mailto:<person with mailbox spelled out in
message>.  

Adding the mailto's will screw things up if the message-id does
become valid. 

Because of the way MHonArc works, this is why addresses to links are
restricted to the message header, and only specific fields in the
headers.  This way I know there is no conflict.

        --ewh

----
             Earl Hood              | University of California: Irvine
      ehood(_at_)medusa(_dot_)acs(_dot_)uci(_dot_)edu      |      Electronic 
Loiterer
http://www.oac.uci.edu/indiv/ehood/ | Dabbler of SGML/WWW/Perl/MIME

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