- From: Albert Lunde <Albert-Lunde@nwu.edu>
- Date: Sat, 2 Mar 1996 22:51:03 -0600 (CST)
- To: bentz@ai.mit.edu
- Cc: www-html@w3.org
> However, an indirect referencing scheme might go a long way towards
> solving this problem. Rather than:
>
> <A HREF="http://www.blah/foo.html">
> which is an "absolute" pointer, perhaps a syntax change allowing
> dynamic lookup would solve the problem:
> <A HREF="www.blah.foo.html@index-server.com" ...>
>
> The idea is that to resolve the HREF, (in this case) index-server.com
> is asked for the *current* location of www.blah.foo.html (syntax here
> needs some thought). This way, one could move pages around, update
> pointers on whatever index server one uses, and all existing pointers
> would still work.
Up to a point, this can be done with no changes in protocol or syntax
by using something like a database-driven CGI script to make
redirects to the actual location of pages, and I think some sites
have done this (we use such a scheme to point to staff home pages
based on our Ph database ... this idea came from uiuc.edu).
Efforts to develop URNs are aimed at providing indirection in slightly
a more elegant or general way... I'm unsure of the exact status of
this but it seemed to be converging on some agreements as of the
Boston WWW conference in December.
--
Albert Lunde Albert-Lunde@nwu.edu
Received on Saturday, 2 March 1996 23:51:15 UTC