[tz] Simplification and unification of scheme:// anchors

[Ian Abbott]

On 28/01/13 11:44, Steffen Daode Nurpmeso wrote:
> Ian Abbott <abbotti at mev.co.uk> wrote:
>   |On 2013-01-27 00:45, Steffen Daode Nurpmeso wrote:
>   |> Here is the promised patch.
>   |> I would be happy if it would be included, so that i finally would
>   |> have given something back to this project.
>   |>
>   |> I followed the style that is used the most, i.e., '<URL>'; if
>   |> there
>   |> were anchors with link text, i've used '<URL> (text)'.
>   |> There may still be some cases were i've merged an existing '()'
>   |> suffix with the link text, separated by a semicolon; these cases
>   |> should all be dates, and there are links which used that format
>   |> regulary.  Hmm.  Beside that any content change would be an
>   |> oversight (i've also fixed at least two broken URL specs,
>   |> however).
>   |
>   |I think this is much easier to read than the old href links, although
>   |several people on the mailing list dislike the angle brackets.
>
> Ya, but there needs to be a way to differentiate in between links
> that (may) work, and those that are known to be outdated.
> And i think it was you who pointed out an example where the
> mechanism of using <LINK> for (possibly) working links, and LINK
> for known-not-to-work ones was already used in the current
> database - and iirc there were some more of those.

It wasn't me who suggested differentiating broken links fron working 
links (if they no longer work - tough!), but I did suggest putting all 
the URLs in angle brackets.

While on the subject, the backslash escapes at the ends of the lines 
with a <URL> with a parenthesised comment on the following line is kind 
of ugly.  I'm sure it must be possible to re-work your script to avoid 
the need for that.  (I.e. if a line ends with a <URL> plus optional 
whitespace, check if the following line starts with optional whitespace 
plus parenthesised link text.)

Then again, perhaps parentheses aren't the ideal delimiters for link 
text anyway, as I'm sure there must be cases in the data files where 
this was not the intended interpretation of the parenthesised text 
following a URL.

-- 
-=( Ian Abbott @ MEV Ltd.    E-mail: <abbotti at mev.co.uk>        )=-
-=( Tel: +44 (0)161 477 1898   FAX: +44 (0)161 718 3587         )=-