best format for long URLs in news articles?

The news prog I use, Turnpike v5.01, will read the following format OK,
but I am advised that other progs such as Agent and Outl**k, won't.

<URL:http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=banana-1503991746070001%40b
orve.demon.co.uk>

Is the best way just to turn off automatic reflow, thereby allowing all
lines to flow out to the right? I realise this shouldn't be done
routinely, even when an article includes no long URLs, since it can
require people to resize windows or scroll rightwards. But so far I
haven't found a better way to enable people reading an article using the
most-used news readers to send a long URL to their web browser with a
single click. Does someone know of one? :-)

TIA
--
banana

What did that URL look like when you sent it? You appear to have
encoded in 8bit, and the line is broken, the URL unfuctional, in
Agent.

--
Paul Batchie

http://www.makeashorterlink.com/

-Jeff B.
yeff at erols dot com

Doesn't Turnpike allow proper-length [1] *text* lines, i.e. lines of
'words' seperated by spaces/white-space, while still allowing the
occasional 'too'-long *non*-text line, i.e. a line without any
(non-escaped) spaces? If it doesn't, I think it is broken. Perhaps this
is a function of your editor instead of of your newsreader (I don't know
anything about Turnpike, so I don't know if it has a built-in/fixed
editor or not.). My newsreader/editor combination (tin+vi) allows 'too'-
long non-text lines.

[1] Less than 80 characters per line. Preferably 72 or so chars/line.

The current version, Turnpike 6.02 does, but IIRC in TP5.01 it is all or
nothing. e.g. I can add the line:

<URL:http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=banana-1503991746070001%40borve.demon.co.uk>

and 'Use pre-formatted margin', which is sanity-wrapped at 144 chars by
default. It has also been suggested that the URL: bit is unnecessary,
so I normally would merely enclose the URL in angle-brackets <...>.

<http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=banana-1503991746070001%40borve.demon.co.uk>

Perhaps users of other readers can comment which if any of those are
usable by them.

The editor is integrated.

That's the default, as is Format=flowed.

--
Jim Crowther "It's MY computer" (tm)

OEnemy tamed by OE-quotefix: <http://jump.to/oe-quotefix>
(But it still can't cope with blank lines in sigs)

Both are usable in Xnews... Incedently, Xnews hilights just the acual
link part ignoring the brakets and the "URL:".

--
Maxxwell C.G. Pollare - Insomnia is my drug of choice...

Spamail: maxxp...@hotmail.com

The Proper way[tm], as it was taught me so long ago I cannot remember
where or when, is to use the exact format you use in your example:

> <URL:http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=banana-150399174607000
> 1%40borve.demon.co.uk>

According to the Proper way[tm], it _shouldn't_ be broken no matter how
long it is. If your newsreader's editor won't allow that, then it _may_
be broken into several lines, and newsreaders should still be able to
piece it together. My newsreader, Xnews, certainly does so without
problems.

As an alternative, spaces may be put around the URL itself, rendering
your example URL as <URL:
http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=banana-
1503991746070001%40borve.demon.co.uk > -- leaving it susceptible to
linebreaks in new and interesting places, as you can see. Personally, I
think this looks rather messy.

A shorter form is also allowed by the Proper way[tm], dropping the
"URL:" part and leaving only
<http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=banana-
1503991746070001%40borve.demon.co.uk>.

I won't get into a debate over whether this actually _is_ the proper
way or not, but the format makes sense to me. The URL is neatly
separated from the text, and can be easily picked out even if the
newsreader doesn't do it automatically. Following this line of
reasoning...

...I couldn't care less about people not being able to use the URL with
a "single click". It's _their_ software limiting them, and although it
may not be _quite_ as easily available, the URL is still there for them
to extract. :)

Tone
--
A. Top posters.
Q. What is the most annoying thing on Usenet?

>banana wrote:

>> <URL:http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=banana1503991746070001%40b
>> orve.demon.co.uk>

I typed it without hitting return; it wrapped in the usual way, and my
copy of the sent version has a line break between "b" and "orve". So does
my copy of the article downloaded from the Demon news server, but it reads
fine with Turnpike v5.01, the entire URL is grey-buttonised.

I suspect that the only news reader with which it 'works' is Turnpike
itself - hardly very useful!

Regards,
--
banana

>http://www.makeashorterlink.com/

Wow! A brilliant fall-back resource, usable and readable by anyone with
web access regardless of what version of what news reader they are
using. Thanks Yeff! :-)
--
banana

>><banana@remove_this.borve.demon.co.uk> wrote:

>The current version, Turnpike 6.02 does, but IIRC in TP5.01 it is all
>or nothing.

Damn! I installed TP6.02 a while back, but for reasons I don't recall -
although I expect I'm not alone in the view I took of them - found it
completely intolerable to use. So I reinstalled TP 5.01, ending up
wasting loads of time because I'd stupidly failed to back up some files
properly. But unfortunately I don't think the inclusion of the
above-mentioned function, whilst excellent, is sufficient to lead me to
change versions.
--
banana

gnus handles it just fine.

hmm. the quoted url doesn't work so well. looks like a little magic is
needed to ignore the quote prefix, the precise nature of which i do not yet
grok in fullness.

--
bringing you boring signatures for 17 years

Except for those of us who like to know where we're going before
we click.

--
Paul Batchie

When you click on the makeashorterlink url it takes you to a page that
tells you the full URL you will be redirected to.

-----------== Posted via Newsfeed.Com - Uncensored Usenet News ==----------
http://www.newsfeed.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World!
-----= Over 100,000 Newsgroups - Unlimited Fast Downloads - 19 Servers =-----

http://www.tinyurl.com is another one and makes even shorter links.

Fair enough, several people share your reservations. I was wary of it
at first, having never used Windows Explorer (WE) before. However, the
comprehensive configurability, especially with regards to Personalities,
won me over after a few weeks. Myself, I'd never revert, but I do
understand other's Mileage Varies.

You may have tried 6.00 or 6.01, which had some oddities with W2k and
XP, due to M$ changing previously published WE parameters without
informing anyone...

Can I suggest a work-around, in that you *don't* add addresses
automatically, but choose to do so when a new correspondent e-mails you?
Less work than pruning the ghastly pre-TP6* address book...

HTH...

Ok, but I'd really have to want to get there to jump that hurdle.

--
Paul Batchie

Hurdle? The page says, "you'll go here", and if you *don't* want
to, you bail. If you do want to - and you *were* interested in
the link, presumably - you do nothing. Low hurdle.

I think a bigger problem, at least in terms of the spirit of
Usenet, is that, in three years, when somebody finds that
conversation on GoogleGroups (or whatever the archive is, then),
the link is only meaningful it MASL is still around, and that
redirection is still in their database. On the *other* other
hand, who knows if the *target* URL will still be valid, by then.

--
Blinky

Hurdle? More like a speedbump, isn't it?
--
JD44-3UJO9T

LOL!
Great sig!
--
JD44-3UJO9T

It's all good on the Mac (Hogwasher, NW-*, MacSOUP, OE, Thoth), you just
have to command-click on it (wrapping doesn't interfere until it's been
quoted, but then it's a problem).

--
JBM
"Your depression will be added to my own" -- Marvin of Borg

Well, I don't think they are brilliant at all! You were talking about
a URL in a (Usenet) *News article* and even *pointing* to a News article
on Google Groups. I don't know for sure, but I think that 'shorter
links' expire rather quickly, at least they are not kept 'forever' as
the Usenet News articles on Google Groups are. So soon you have a News
article in a News archive like Google Groups, containing an *expired*
short link, which *used* to point to another News article which *still*
exists (probably in the same archive. Please correct me if I'm wrong,
but I'm afraid I'm not.
> --
> banana

<snip>

Whilst stressing that I described it as "brilliant" *as a fallback
resource*, I'd agree that the 'shorter links' are very unlikely to stay
around as long as the archive which was kept by Deja News and is now kept
by Google Groups (and which may be kept in the future by whoever might buy
Google or the archive). The latter has the great merit of indexing news
articles by Message-ID.

But news articles are often easy to refer to using a single line only,
once the Google Groups URL is hacked around a bit, and superfluous bits
got rid of, so long as the poster hasn't for one reason or another given
their article a ridiculously long Message-ID.

E.g.
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=HX7bDbA49oM9EwMK%40borve.demon.co.uk&
oe=UTF-8&output=gplain

can be shortened to
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=HX7bDbA49oM9EwMK%40borve.demon.co.uk

The URL I gave before was to a thread of articles, for which the reference
usually requires a few more characters (well, three: using "threadm"
instead of "selm" - but given the length of many Message-IDs, three
characters can often make the difference).

However, there remain URLs such as those for newspaper articles archived
at newspapers' websites which can require 300 characters or more.
--
banana

Perhaps. See my reply to Blinky.

--
Paul Batchie

Yes, personally I always use "selm=...", but even those can get 'too'
long is the Message-ID: is long.

Perhaps the best approach (for 'you', I don't have a problem posting/
using long URLs) is to post *both* the 'shorter link' *and* the
(possibly broken-up) long one. That way people can use what suits them
best while the shorter link still exists. When the shorter link has
expired, they can use the long one (possibly after pasting the broken-up
parts together again).

Sorry, my friend, but the link is broken in my newsreader, Gravity 2.5.

--
Donald L McDaniel
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