bugGNU roff - Bugs: bug #60305, chem(1) links to long-gone...

 
 

bug #60305: chem(1) links to long-gone http://cm.bell-labs.com/ URL

Submitter:  John Gardner <alhadis>
Submitted:  Mon 29 Mar 2021 04:09:14 PM UTC
   
 
Category:  Preprocessor - others/general Severity:  3 - Normal
Item Group:  Documentation Status:  Fixed
Privacy:  Public Assigned to:  gbranden
Open/Closed:  Closed Planned Release:  1.23.0
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Fri 20 May 2022 03:39:10 AM UTC, comment #6: 

The discussion (with its scope broadened at my prompting) didn't really seem to lead anywhere definitive.  In the past year or two I've groped in the direction of documenting URLs as "historical" in a few cases, but the number has been so few that it might be exaggerating to call it a trend.

For now, I'd like to state a rule that we shouldn't have broken URLs in man page text unless they are annotated as "historical".  This way a user is prompted to use the Wayback Machine of the Internet Archive or whatever other resource they have access to at the time they read it.

Resolving.  There's no ChangeLog entry and no bug-closer because as noted in comment #1, the URL was already dropped from groff Git by the time the ticket was files.


commit 83326197dce94750d5cb71a4c84402bdb2f3b558
Author: G. Branden Robinson <g.branden.robinson@gmail.com>
Date:   Sun Sep 6 05:48:04 2020 +1000

    chem(1): Remove dead links.

    Also expand and cocommit 83326197dce94750d5cb71a4c84402bdb2f3b558
Author: G. Branden Robinson <g.branden.robinson@gmail.com>
Date:   Sun Sep 6 05:48:04 2020 +1000

    chem(1): Remove dead links.

    Also expand and correct bibliographic and source references.


G. Branden Robinson <gbranden>
Group administrator
Mon 20 Sep 2021 12:41:51 AM UTC, comment #5: 

comment #4:

> That's an incredibly unlikely scenario


Yes, it is, but over the decades we've seen enough real-world failures of too-big-to-fail organizations to hopefully keep us from taking for granted things that today seem solidly permanent.

> it's trivial to redirect incoming requests from one URL scheme to another.


It is -- and yet plenty of high-profile sites fail to do this in the wake of a site-wide reorg.  One would hope archive.org's webmasters have a keener sense of the importance of this than most, but again, every once in a while one's hopes are dashed.

In any case, this entire discussion is speculation concerning the source of Branden's vague unease, so I'm gonna bow out and let Branden address whether it's remotely on the mark, if he so chooses.

Dave <barx>
Group Member
Mon 30 Aug 2021 03:17:12 AM UTC, comment #4: 


> But tomorrow archive.org could cease to exist.


That's an incredibly unlikely scenario that--if it were to happen--would impact a lot of high-traffic sites (like Wikipedia) that rely on Archive.org for reliable citations. It would be noticed immediately by a good majority of the Internet, and dealt with almost as quickly.

Moreover, the same argument could extend to gnu.org (whose serves have gone down several times in the past), so it's a rather reason to justify keeping a dead link.

> Or it could get reorganized in a way that invalidates all current URLs pointing to it.


This argument is even less relevant, because it's trivial to redirect incoming requests from one URL scheme to another. No webmaster would do so lightly, especially when digital preservation is the primary mission of their site.

In any case, point #1 (above) applies here also.

John Gardner <alhadis>
Fri 02 Apr 2021 07:45:37 AM UTC, comment #3: 

comment #1:

> Restore the links in Internet Archive form?  I have a vague
> unease with doing that but I can't quite articulate it.


This may or may not be related to your unease:

archive.org URLs that show these pages' original content are useful today.  But tomorrow archive.org could cease to exist.  Or it could get reorganized in a way that invalidates all current URLs pointing to it.  (This would be somewhat ironic given the Internet Archive's mission, but irony happens.)  If some form of an internet archive continues to exist, the original URL is a more useful piece of information than the archive.org URL for finding a given page in the new archive.  (In practice this is a minor concern, as the original URL is embedded in the archive.org one.)

Dave <barx>
Group Member
Wed 31 Mar 2021 07:52:30 AM UTC, comment #2: 


> I already removed the URLs last September as commit 83326197dce94750d5cb71a4c84402bdb2f3b558.


Oops. I just noticed my earlier search for `cm.bell-labs.*` was matching stale artefacts built earlier last year. After running `make clean`, I can confirm the URLs are indeed, as you said, removed. :) Apologies for the noise...

> Restore the links in Internet Archive form? I have a vague unease with doing that but I can't quite articulate it.


It's probably because we've never done this before. Our usual fix for bit-rot is to cull dead links entirely -- but IMHO, deleting an obscure link of historical interest is worse than leaving broken links everywhere. Future users won't know that these sources ever existed; at least with a 404, readers know to consult the Wayback Machine for an archived version.

I suggest we keep a link to the archived versions of these pages, but only in contexts where they're most relevant. E.g., the SEE ALSO section of chem(1), not comments in the headers of `contrib/chem/examples/122/*.chem`.

> (At least breaking the URLs, as long as they are, won't be a problem. ;-) )


It's benign at the moment, but who knows if those links won't redirect to a product's landing-page sometime in the future. This is a pretty common practice for corporate sites that formerly hosted technical documentation (\*cough\*Apple\*cough\*).

John Gardner <alhadis>
Wed 31 Mar 2021 03:09:12 AM UTC, comment #1: 

Hi John,

I already removed the URLs last September as commit 83326197dce94750d5cb71a4c84402bdb2f3b558.

https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/groff-commit/2020-09/msg00043.html

Given that, how would you like to proceed?

Restore the links in Internet Archive form?  I have a vague unease with doing that but I can't quite articulate it.  (At least breaking the URLs, as long as they are, won't be a problem. ;-) )

This report could further have its scope redrawn to handle other instances of URLs to the now-dead cm.bell-labs.com site in the following files.

PROBLEMS
contrib/chem/ChangeLog
contrib/chem/README.txt
contrib/chem/chem.pic
contrib/chem/examples/122/README.txt
contrib/chem/examples/122/ch2a_ethyl.chem
contrib/chem/examples/122/ch2b_benzene.chem
contrib/chem/examples/122/ch2c_benzene_right.chem
contrib/chem/examples/122/ch4a_stick.chem
contrib/chem/examples/122/ch4b_methyl_acetate.chem
contrib/chem/examples/122/ch4c_colon.chem
contrib/chem/examples/122/ch4d_HCl.H2O.chem
contrib/chem/examples/122/ch4e_CaSO4.2H2O.chem
contrib/chem/examples/122/ch4f_C.chem
contrib/chem/examples/122/ch4g_BP.chem
contrib/chem/examples/122/ch4h_methacrylate.chem
contrib/chem/examples/122/ch4i_cyclo.chem
contrib/chem/examples/122/ch4j_ring4.chem
contrib/chem/examples/122/ch4k_ring3.chem
contrib/chem/examples/122/ch4l_vertex.chem
contrib/chem/examples/122/ch4m_double.chem
contrib/chem/examples/122/ch4n_triple.chem
contrib/chem/examples/122/ch4o_aromatic.chem
contrib/chem/examples/122/ch4p_cholestanol.chem
contrib/chem/examples/122/ch4q_rings.chem
contrib/chem/examples/122/ch4r_spiro.chem
contrib/chem/examples/122/ch4s_heteroatoms.chem
contrib/chem/examples/122/ch4t_polycyclic.chem
contrib/chem/examples/122/ch4u_nicotine.chem
contrib/chem/examples/122/ch4v_histidine.chem
contrib/chem/examples/122/ch4w_lsd.chem
contrib/chem/examples/122/ch4x_anisole.chem
contrib/chem/examples/122/ch4y_reserpine.chem
contrib/chem/examples/122/ch4z1_eqn_glutamic.chem
contrib/chem/examples/122/ch4z2_text.chem
contrib/chem/examples/122/ch5a_size.chem
contrib/chem/examples/122/ch6a_pic.chem
contrib/chem/examples/122/ch6b_dna.chem
contrib/chem/examples/122/chAa_polymer.chem
contrib/chem/examples/122/chAb_vinyl_chloro.chem
contrib/chem/examples/122/chAc_morphine.chem
contrib/chem/examples/122/chAd_chlorophyll.chem
contrib/chem/examples/122/chAe_chair.chem
contrib/chem/examples/122/chAf_arrow.chem
contrib/chem/examples/122/chAg_circle.chem
contrib/chem/examples/122/chAh_brackets.chem
contrib/chem/examples/122/chAi_poly_vinyl_chloride.chem
contrib/chem/examples/122/chBa_jump.chem
contrib/chem/examples/122/chBb_bonds.chem
contrib/chem/examples/122/chBc_rings.chem
contrib/mom/momdoc/inlines.html
man/groff_out.5.man

G. Branden Robinson <gbranden>
Group administrator
Mon 29 Mar 2021 04:09:14 PM UTC, original submission:  
John Gardner <alhadis>

 

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    Follow 7 latest changes.

    Date Changed by Updated Field Previous Value => Replaced by
    2022-05-20 gbranden CategoryCore Preprocessor - others/general
        StatusNeed Info Fixed
        Open/ClosedOpen Closed
        Planned ReleaseNone 1.23.0
        Summarychem(1) still links to long-gone http://cm.bell-labs.com/ chem(1) links to long-gone http://cm.bell-labs.com/ URL
    2021-03-31 gbranden StatusNone Need Info
        Assigned toNone gbranden

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