h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi there,

Just thought I would pass on a quick thought. You could parse the forum entries so that words of the form "Annnnn" or "Unnnnnn" (n being a digit) are automatically turned into links to guide entries. Something similar occurs on WikiWikiWeb (http://c2.com/cgi/wiki).

There would no doubt be some problems, such as avoiding the existing links to h2g2 pages, but I thought it was still worth mentioning.

I don't understand exactly what you mean? I'm not a techy though. Can you explain again please?

I think he means that if I want you to have a link to my page in this forum, I have to type
http://www.h2g2.com/U106694 (the whole URL of my page)
Whereas the parser could be made to think of
U106694 (just the page's h2g2 identifier)
as the same link, so that it turned into a hyperlink like the other and took you to the same place.
Sorry Peta, I seem to be following you today

Well, I notice that people often type in things like http://www.h2g2.com/U113204 to link to guide entries and home pages. I thought it might be nice if we could drop the initial part of the URL. The h2g2 server would look for a pattern (something like U or A, followed by four or more digits) and form a link to the page in question. Does that make sense?

Perhaps this does not happen as often as I think around here. I'm more used to the website quoted above, where the links between documents are emphasised a lot more.