[kwlug-disc] Link shortener advice

[Steve Izma]

On Fri, Aug 21, 2020 at 05:58:04PM -0400, Jason Eckert wrote:
> Subject: Re: [kwlug-disc] Link shortener advice
> 
> I avoid link shorteners altogether. Instead, I ensure that the
> description text is hyperlinked to the full URL so that the
> reader doesn't see the full URL unless they hover over the
> hyperlink. Of course for email, this requires it be in HTML
> format instead of plaintext.  In the few cases where plaintext
> is a must, I use footnotes (e.g. see Link#1 below and put
> Link#1:hyperlink) at the bottom of the message.

I thought that one of the advantages of link shorteners is that
you can redirect where the shortened version points to. URLs are
notoriously volatile, so distributing a shortened URL that can be
maintained for a long time and whose target can be updated as
necessary seems like a much better strategy to me.

URLs in print books are a serious problem for those of us in
publishing, not only because they are often carelessly designed
(i.e., in cases where the website has bizarre pathnames, often
with redundant directory names and too many subdirectories, and
useless post query strings), but also may not fit on a typeset
line, resulting in difficult decisions as to breakpoints that
maintain legibility. The current state of ebooks doesn't help
this because books that need URLs as references or support for
arguments are far more likely to be found in print than in epubs
(a market dominated by romance novels).

So I'm all for shortening URLs; for me, HTML mail isn't worth
dealing with just for the sake of the appearance of an URL.

	-- Steve


-- 
Steve Izma
-
Home: 35 Locust St., Kitchener, Ontario, Canada  N2H 1W6
E-mail: sizma at golden.net  phone: 519-745-1313
cell (text only; not frequently checked): 519-998-2684

==
I have always felt the necessity to verify what to many seemed a
simple multiplication table.
	-- Ilya Ehrenburg (Soviet author and critic; he's not
	   talking about mathematics)