[Haskell-cafe] Haskell Weekly News: Issue 187

[Albert Y. C. Lai]

Picky readers we are.

I don't mind URL length. And there are ways to have long URLs in-situ 
without being a big disruption.

I hate the borrowed academic practice of saying [0] and giving the URL 
two hundred lines later. It worked great on paper in hands because I 
could stick my finger to the paper to remember where to return. It also 
works great on real HTML documents because browsers have a "back" button 
for the same. It completely fails in plain text email because I can't 
stick a finger and I can't press the "back" button. Which one is the 
bigger disruption: an in-situ long URL that makes me skip oh two lines 
to continue with the main text? or the URL postponed by two hundred 
lines so I have to first remember it is [1] not [0] this time, then 
scroll down several pages to hunt for the URL, and then... I forget 
where to return to?

If people want short URLs, I don't mind that either, but I'm picky on 
how they are shortened. The shortener should offer the option of showing 
me the original URL and waiting for me to go ahead or abort. As far as I 
know this means tinyurl.com only.

Thank you for bearing with my rant.







































































































































[0] No URL for this.

[1] No URL for this either.