Re: Some links in online manual do not work

[Bastien Guerry <bzg@gnu.org>]

Max Nikulin <manikulin@gmail.com> writes:

> Unfortunately some redirection targets still respond with 301
>
> 301 https://orgmode.org/manual/Dates-and-Times.html
> 301 https://orgmode.org/manual/Deadlines-and-Scheduling.html
> 301 https://orgmode.org/manual/Emphasis-and-Monospace.html
> 301 https://orgmode.org/manual/Export-in-Foreign-Buffers.html
> 301 https://orgmode.org/manual/HTML-export-commands.html
> 301 https://orgmode.org/manual/Properties-and-Columns.html

Fixed, thanks.

> If redirection directives were included as separate files then it
> would be possible to just check them by a command like
>
>     awk '{ if ($NF >= 3) print $3; }' /tmp/manual.txt  |
>         xargs --replace -- \
>         curl --head --write-out '%{http_code} %{url_effective}\n' \
>             --silent --show-error --output /dev/null \
>             'https://orgmode.org/manual/{}'

https://git.sr.ht/~bzg/worg/tree/master/item/nginx.conf contains the
list of redirections -- the checks could be done from here, right?

> Original proposal to add redirections contained an s-expression with
> mappings. I would consider tracking it in the main Org repository. I
> believe, list of info nodes in the released manual should be added to
> it as known names. 

I'm not sure I understand.  Nothing should be added to the main Org
repository to fix a problem with the orgmode.org website, even if it
is a problem with the HTML manual as produced from org-mode.git.

> The idea is to make it easier to add redirections
> before new release. With such list as an input, a simple script could
> detect nodes absent in new release but existed in the earlier
> one. Another case is names appeared again making redirection rules
> obsolete.

I'm not in favor of going into this direction.

So far we provide an easy fix via rewrite rules to the problem created
with the change in the way Texinfo produces URLs.

Such rewrite rules are fine when they are like "rewrite THIS-URL.html
this-url.html" because stumbling on a dead link just because of lower
vs upper case letters is way too frustrating.

But more complex rewrite rules (from old manual nodes to new ones) is
IMHO calling for trouble. What if we split the "Properties and Column"
manual page into "Properties" and "Columns"?  Where to redirect?

-- 
 Bastien