[Suggestion] URL Replacements - V5

[Grafidea]

I think it would be a good solution if the V5 version had URL Replacements built into the engine not with external plugins. Something like WoltLab Suite has. Please think about it, because a lot of forums are foreign and have diacritics in links.

[Grafidea]

You can replace individual letters as well as whole words.

[opentype]

12 hours ago, Grafidea said:

because a lot of forums are foreign and have diacritics in links.

Of course, but so what? Forcing everything into a basic English character set is a thing of the last century and not something we want to add as feature for modern software. Links work perfectly fine with diacritics, either directly or (when in doubt) URL-encoded. The examples shown in the Woltlab screenshot above are rather terrible. They not even convert the characters in a meaningful way, they actually erase the distinct meaning of these characters. A rather bad idea, both for human readers and the processing of search engines and so on. An Ł is not an L just because there are visual similarities. 

What’s wrong with a link like https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/České_knížectví ? If it works for a site like Wikipedia, it works for our forums too. 

[Grafidea]

Links without diacritics look better, simpler. They are also much easier to prescribe for people from another country. This wikipedia link you sent is aimed at compatriots. Try typing it on your keyboard. The link cannot always be copied.

Edited July 2, 2023 by Grafidea

[opentype]

36 minutes ago, Grafidea said:

Links without diacritics look better, simpler. 

Why? That’s an opinion at best. You aren’t even trying to give any reasons for this opinion. So it’s nothing more than “because I say so”. Since when are links meant to “look pleasing” and who defines that? 
https://invisioncommunity.com/profile/374850-björnmüller/
https://invisioncommunity.com/profile/374850-bjornmuller/

What’s the difference? Is the first one somehow “ugly” just because of an ö and ü in it? And is it sooo awful to look at that we need to build a feature to get rid of it in the URL, while the same users see exactly the same characters in the title of the page?
I already gave good reasons against it. You are interfering with the language rules (spelling and pronunciation) and make machine processing unnecessarily hard. That has more substance than “looks”. 

 

36 minutes ago, Grafidea said:

Try typing it on your keyboard. 

Why would I? Are you saying someone would want to type out a community link like https://invisioncommunity.com/forums/topic/474558-suggestion-url-replacements-v5/#comment-2946540 in full? Diacritics or not. That’s the context we are talking about, are we not? 
If we are talking about custom pages (for example a landing page to be put on a poster), then IPS already allows to customize the URL. 

 

Edited July 2, 2023 by opentype

[Grafidea]

Diacritical marks can make links difficult to read and make them difficult to remember. Links should be as understandable and intuitive as possible for users. If the link contains diacritic marks, it may require special handling by the user, such as copying and pasting, to use it, which can be impractical and annoying. Since the internet is a global medium, it is important to ensure that links are readable and work properly on different platforms. It is important to create links that are simpler and understandable for users.

[opentype]

You are clearly not willing or able to have an honest discussion about this. You keep replying but you do not acknowledge any points I made and you are not answer any of my questions which are designed to clarify your position and to find out, who has better facts or arguments. But you deliberately keep it vague with this “it just needs to be simple(r)”, so potential problems in your claims cannot be exposed. And by the way: good arguments for your side also cannot be brought to light this way and potentially convince the IPS team. I specifically asked about the context of these links. You just claimed people need to “remember” links. Which links? You can’t even give an example of the type of link you are talking about, which would make this discussion so much easier. Maybe you have a use-case which I would actually agree with, but didn’t think about yet. But since you don’t properly address what I say and ask, there is no progress whatsoever. 

Edited July 2, 2023 by opentype

[Grafidea]

Internet standards such as RFC 3986 on URI syntax explicitly state that diacritics should not be used in links. It is recommended that URLs contain only basic alphanumeric characters (A-Z, a-z, 0-9) and some special characters such as '-', '_', '~' and '.'. This allows for compatibility and consistency between different systems and platforms. URLs with accented characters may be difficult for some users to read and understand. Especially people who are not proficient in a given language may have problems entering and recognizing such addresses. This can lead to errors and confusion. It is worth noting that while diacritics are not recommended in URLs, some browsers and operating systems may automatically replace some diacritics with their ASCII equivalent (e.g. "ł" becomes "l"). Nevertheless, for consistency and compatibility, it is recommended to avoid diacritical marks in links and use simple, readable URLs. Amen

Edited July 2, 2023 by Grafidea

[Luuuk]

4 hours ago, opentype said:

They not even convert the characters in a meaningful way, they actually erase the distinct meaning of these characters.

I have to agree.

Those replacements can even totally change a meaning and while the link could be "easier to remember" but for wrong reasons. Let me use the following extreme example from Polish language:

"łaska" vs "laska"

They are actually two different words and each of them have multiple meanings and none of them cross each other.
- The first one could be: "would you be so kind...", "grace", "pity", etc.
- The second one could be: "walking stick" but in a slang also a "hot girl" or "blowjob" 😆. Imagine the word placed in an unfortunate combination and you'll get a link sounding like a p*rn.

Jokes aside, such problem could be in different languages too so you can't guarantee what actually you render as a "message" in the link...