* * * * *
                                        
                             An unexpected feature
                                        
As I was writing the link to RFC-2045 [1] in the previous post [2], an idea
suddenly struck me—why should I have to type out the entire URL (Uniform
Resource Locator)? I already have a shortcut to link to Amazon [3] (all I
have to do is write a link like <a href="asin:B00BWQW73E"> and mod_blog
converts it to <a class="book"
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00BWQW73E/conmanlaborat-20">)
so it shouldn't be that hard to add.

I was fully expecting it to take maybe fifteen minutes or so to add the code,
but to my surprise, no code change was required! The configuration file [4]
has this bit:

> affiliate =
> {
>   {
>     proto = "asin",
>     link  = "http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/%s/conmanlaborat-20"
>   }
> }
> 

It was originally intended for affiliate links, but it'll work for this as
well. A slight modification:

> affiliate =
> {
>   {
>     proto = "asin",
>     link  = "http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/%s/conmanlaborat-20"
>   },
>   {
>     proto = "rfc",
>     link  = "http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc%s.txt"
>   },
> }
> 

Now all I have to do is write <a href="rfc:2045"> and mod_blog will convert
it to <a href="http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2045.txt">. I love it when stuff
like this happens.

[1] https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2045.txt
[2] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2014/04/26.1
[3] https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00BWQW73E/conmanlaborat-20
[4] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2011/11/28.1

Email Sean Conner at sean@conman.org

.