Angle brackets for web links

[Herb]

For years, I have gone out of my way and meticulously included angle
brackets in virtually all web links I send by e-mail and in newsgroups,
because I thought that some e-mail/news applications break (or used to
break) long links at the receiving end.

I was about to send a message to ask whether angle brackets are still
necessary/advisable these days or whether I can stop wasting time on
them, when, coincidentally, one of my recipients actually complained
about them, saying that he needs to remove the brackets in order to get
my links to work! I find this rather odd, but in any case, it makes my
question all the more pertinent.

--
Herbert Eppel
www.HETranslation.co.uk

[Mike Easter]

In real life, angle brackets 'don't do any good' (but don't usually do
any harm).

The readers that wrap/break long URLs generally wrap them anyway with or
without the brackets. The readers like Tb that don't wrap long URLs,
don't wrap them anyway with or without the brackets.

People who use wrapping readers should figure out some other way to
prevent their long URLs from being broken (besides brackets) or else
supplement their long URLs with shortened ones so that people don't have
to reconstruct their broken URL which had brackets.

People who use URL non-wrapping readers like Tb don't need to use
brackets to solve anything for anybody.

In theory, or on paper, somewhere it is written (probably regarding
something html-ish) that brackets should be used around URLs to be
'proper'. If URLs are written in one continuous unbroken string - a
string which hasn't been broken by an improper space character - the URL
won't be wrapping when your Tb posts them.

I'm surprised someone has to remove your brackets. What reader was that?


--
Mike Easter

[Chris Ramsden]

Herb wrote:
>
> For years, I have gone out of my way and meticulously included angle
> brackets in virtually all web links I send by e-mail and in newsgroups,
> because I thought that some e-mail/news applications break (or used to
> break) long links at the receiving end.
>
> I was about to send a message to ask whether angle brackets are still
> necessary/advisable these days or whether I can stop wasting time on
> them, when, coincidentally, one of my recipients actually complained
> about them, saying that he needs to remove the brackets in order to get
> my links to work! I find this rather odd, but in any case, it makes my
> question all the more pertinent.

Try "Edit|Paste As Quotation"

[David E. Ross]

See RFC 3986 (published in 2005) at
<ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc3986.txt>. Scroll to near the
bottom of the very long page, to Appendix C. I quote part of that RFC:
> Using <> angle brackets around each URI is especially recommended as
> a delimiting style for a reference that contains embedded whitespace.

> For robustness, software that accepts user-typed URI should attempt
> to recognize and strip both delimiters and embedded whitespace.

The first paragraph of Appendix C gives the rationale:
> URIs are often transmitted through formats that do not provide a
> clear context for their interpretation. For example, there are many
> occasions when a URI is included in plain text; examples include text
> sent in email, USENET news, and on printed paper. In such cases, it
> is important to be able to delimit the URI from the rest of the text,
> and in particular from punctuation marks that might be mistaken for
> part of the URI.

Any E-mail application is broken if it fails to comply with RFC 3986 by
recognizing that the <> brackets are external to and not part of a
bracketed URI. RFC 1738 (published in 1994) was the predecessor to RFC
3986 and contained the same specification for bracketing URIs. Thus,
developers have had 18 years to bring their applications into
compliance. Eudora Lite complied with the bracketing specification in
RFC 1738 at least 15 years ago.

By the way, RFC 1738 and RFC 3986 were broth written by Tim Berners-Lee,
recognized by many as "the father of the World Wide Web" and currently
the head of the W3C (the source of the authoritative specifications for
XML, HTML, CSS, etc).

--

David E. Ross
<http://www.rossde.com/>

Anyone who thinks government owns a monopoly on inefficient, obstructive
bureaucracy has obviously never worked for a large corporation.
© 1997 by David E. Ross

[Herb]

Thanks for your comprehensive reply, but I'm not sure what to conclude
from it.

Should I continue to include angle brackets in the links I post, or is
it a waste of time?

--
Herbert Eppel
www.HETranslation.co.uk

[Herb]

Thanks for your reply.

The chap who says he has to remove the brackets appears to be using
SquirrelMail 1.4.22.

Anyway, from your reply I conclude that I can/should stop wasting time
on including angle brackets, right?

--
Herbert Eppel
www.HETranslation.co.uk

[Herb]

Thanks, but I'm not sure how this is relevant to the angle bracket issue.

--
Herbert Eppel
www.HETranslation.co.uk

[Dave Royal]

On Sat, 10 Nov 2012 09:51:54 +0000, Herb wrote:

>
> The chap who says he has to remove the brackets appears to be using
> SquirrelMail 1.4.22.
>
> Anyway, from your reply I conclude that I can/should stop wasting time
> on including angle brackets, right?

So you know of one recipient who doesn't like the brackets. What you
don't know is how many recipients don't like them but haven't told you.
Or how many need and appreciate them.

So you might be saving your time, but wasting others'. Tricky decision ;-
)
--
(Remove any numerics from my email address.)

[Chris Ramsden]

> On 10.11.2012 01:45 UK Time, David E. Ross wrote:

...

>
> Thanks for your comprehensive reply, but I'm not sure what to conclude
> from it.
>
> Should I continue to include angle brackets in the links I post, or is
> it a waste of time?
>

I read Dave Ross's reply to mean you should carry on as you have been
doing, as it's the recommended way to quote an URI.

I wasn't aware of this convention myself; I've used the Paste As
Quotation method as a trick to prevent Thunderbird from wrapping long
URIs and thereby breaking them. I shall try the <> format.

Chris Ramsden.

[Herb]

Thanks for your further reply.

It isn't Thunderbird that breaks things. As far as I am aware long links
tend to get broken at the receving end by inferior mail software.

--
Herbert Eppel
www.HETranslation.co.uk

[David E. Ross]

As I recall, Thunderbird will wrap long URIs, at least when displaying
messages. HOWEVER, Thunderbird also recognizes the use of the <>
brackets and is able to treat a wrapped URI as an unwrapped entity.
This happens with ASCII-formatted messages, which is the only way I send
and view messages.