Re: Broken links, are we ever going to address them?`

Daniel W. Connolly (connolly@hal.com)
Wed, 25 Jan 1995 23:09:05 +0100

In message <199501251841.NAA08736@homepark.cc.gatech.edu>, James Pitkow writes:
>The intrinsic solution to the problem can be directly addressed via
>the use of intelligent publishing environments [1] in tandem
>with location independent naming schemes, e.g. URN [2].
>
>[1] <URL:http://www.cc.gatech.edu/grads/j/Kipp.Jones/publish/publishing_1.html
>[2] <URL:http://www.gatech.edu/iiir/>

In Hyper-G[1] and prospero[2], the links are maintained much less by
hand, and much more by the machine. Prospero employs a notion of "time
to live" for links, so that stale links just go away after some time
(I think).

I expect that over time, link addresses will be maintained
independently from document content; I'm not sure if HTML will change
to accomodate this, or if document content and addresses will be
"merged" into the current HTML format on the server side.

I am seeing more and more motivation to maintain links separate from
content all the time...

I don't have time to look into the details right now, but folks cooking
up solutions would do well to investigate those systems.

[1] Hyper-G W3 Entry Point (Informationssystem der TU Graz / DVR: 008 1833)
http://www.tu-graz.ac.at:80/CHCIbib/

[2] ftp://prospero.isi.edu/pub/prospero/doc/