3 ms·

> In effect, if I wanted to drop a URL in this comment, the petname model requires that I use the UUID. Yes... or, not at all, depending on how you want to loo

> In effect, if I wanted to drop a URL in this comment, the petname model requires that I use the UUID. Yes... or, not at all, depending on how you want to look at it. To use their phone book example, if I want to call my dad, I look up "dad", and I call him. I don't use his phone number (although obviously down in the internals of my phone it's going to use his phone number). If you had a local mapping for a web site saved as "coolsite", you might post a link here on HN as "web://coolsite". Your browser would take care of translating that into a UUID under the covers, so the actual post would contain the UUID. When I read the post, though, I would probably see the link as "web://@pfraze => coolsite" (obviously your browser would need to post some metadata for that to happen - similar to how you can include a name with an email address) or if I already have the site in my local mapping I might see it as "web://thatawesomesite", or whatever name I'd chosen. Or perhaps my browser would go to something like DNS to reverse lookup the UUID.

biotinker 4y ago
This unfortunately only works in situations where rich text is available that can hide the UUID, which is not the case for HN. The person you replied to is correct: they cannot share the URL literally in that comment, without using the UUID visible to all.
- jwalton 4y ago
  Maybe... But maybe not. If the browser was the one with support for pet names, the browser could see the UUID URI and replace it transparently for you. Would we want the browser to transparently replace a URI in plain text, even outside an anchor tag? Maybe, maybe not - this is a good question. Maybe it would pop up the pet name in a popover if you hover on the URI? Or maybe we'd have some special markdown syntax for these links that has the URI, a suggested pet name for people who don't have one, and a link text (since markdown URIs at the end of a post are pretty much how we roll here on HN today anyways). I wouldn't try to think about this as "What if we implemented a browser plugin that supported this?" Instead, think about if this was "the standard". Imagine a world where there was excellent support for it in all software that we use, and browsers and/or sites would find ways to make it transparent and friendly. Like, what if VS Code made it so when you hovered over a URI in a piece of code, it would look it up in your local pet name database, and show it in a popover? If this were just "the way things are done", then you'd never put up with crappy software that showed you the UUID. It would be like web sites that don't let you highlight or copy text - software that didn't handle naming resources correctly would be obnoxious software you'd hate to use.
  - pooper 4y ago
    I was kind of hoping we can just use long urls... as long as we are NOT typing them by hand :) Previously, on HN (just this morning, still on the front page) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32493946 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32493946 so if I wanted to share a document about how much water we need in total per day, I could just share you the complete url... or at least that's what I was thinking earlier. As long as I don't have to type it by hand, it should be ok, right? https://numpad.io?#text/O4ewTgNgJg+gDiOBXCBDALgSxAOwAQC8eA7AHTECsAzHgFR4CMADHgHp4CcAUACoAWAUzyoAbgLCoA5kLjiAzrjxI5AuYyYNSFPJNQQIuNSABmeYBnF4ACpaioAnqS7n04+G9lgFOd2Bh37GAhMVzBCdU1teipyAA4KABYGLi50EHQ9GBcPNwCgkMsiUEhYBGQ0LEV6bL9PX29ffwd80K5cARa3TB8AYyQAI0wemABbAVDwplImDVT0zJrGvL7B4bGJojSMiCyLWtzm4In6ds6-bpgVodHx8S4e-rB0AAothb2l5qu127AAShSqDwKyE6D4GDwmDUqH6ICQ6Dw7TwAGtMAZ1pZUDgoHhwRBTM8kNjMXgRmiBH9EfgBKgenw8HJMFAhFC8AIcHDJPSanhjOBhPo8GCZAJEBAWfhhWZwNBefygQFSHggA https://numpad.io?#text/O4ewTgNgJg+gDiOBXCBDALgSxAOwAQC8eA7A... my rough estimate calculation if anyone is interested, a cube that is about one kilometer and half (under a mile) on each side is enough water for all the people in the world for a day.
  - ryukafalz 4y ago
    Right, if we're talking about what this could be like then it's instructive to consider what a client would look like that supported this natively. For example, we might have a "petname" tag that a browser could use to display a petname link like so: <petname ref="pet:4f30b43ec38b43c3abad5d422125900f" proposed_name="Google" /> The browser would then display this in the same way mentioned in the OP; if you already have an entry locally it shows your local name, otherwise it shows the proposed name and marks it as such.

biotinker 4y ago

This unfortunately only works in situations where rich text is available that can hide the UUID, which is not the case for HN. The person you replied to is correct: they cannot share the URL literally in that comment, without using the UUID visible to all.

jwalton 4y ago
Maybe... But maybe not. If the browser was the one with support for pet names, the browser could see the UUID URI and replace it transparently for you. Would we want the browser to transparently replace a URI in plain text, even outside an anchor tag? Maybe, maybe not - this is a good question. Maybe it would pop up the pet name in a popover if you hover on the URI? Or maybe we'd have some special markdown syntax for these links that has the URI, a suggested pet name for people who don't have one, and a link text (since markdown URIs at the end of a post are pretty much how we roll here on HN today anyways). I wouldn't try to think about this as "What if we implemented a browser plugin that supported this?" Instead, think about if this was "the standard". Imagine a world where there was excellent support for it in all software that we use, and browsers and/or sites would find ways to make it transparent and friendly. Like, what if VS Code made it so when you hovered over a URI in a piece of code, it would look it up in your local pet name database, and show it in a popover? If this were just "the way things are done", then you'd never put up with crappy software that showed you the UUID. It would be like web sites that don't let you highlight or copy text - software that didn't handle naming resources correctly would be obnoxious software you'd hate to use.
- pooper 4y ago
  I was kind of hoping we can just use long urls... as long as we are NOT typing them by hand :) Previously, on HN (just this morning, still on the front page) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32493946 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32493946 so if I wanted to share a document about how much water we need in total per day, I could just share you the complete url... or at least that's what I was thinking earlier. As long as I don't have to type it by hand, it should be ok, right? https://numpad.io?#text/O4ewTgNgJg+gDiOBXCBDALgSxAOwAQC8eA7AHTECsAzHgFR4CMADHgHp4CcAUACoAWAUzyoAbgLCoA5kLjiAzrjxI5AuYyYNSFPJNQQIuNSABmeYBnF4ACpaioAnqS7n04+G9lgFOd2Bh37GAhMVzBCdU1teipyAA4KABYGLi50EHQ9GBcPNwCgkMsiUEhYBGQ0LEV6bL9PX29ffwd80K5cARa3TB8AYyQAI0wemABbAVDwplImDVT0zJrGvL7B4bGJojSMiCyLWtzm4In6ds6-bpgVodHx8S4e-rB0AAothb2l5qu127AAShSqDwKyE6D4GDwmDUqH6ICQ6Dw7TwAGtMAZ1pZUDgoHhwRBTM8kNjMXgRmiBH9EfgBKgenw8HJMFAhFC8AIcHDJPSanhjOBhPo8GCZAJEBAWfhhWZwNBefygQFSHggA https://numpad.io?#text/O4ewTgNgJg+gDiOBXCBDALgSxAOwAQC8eA7A... my rough estimate calculation if anyone is interested, a cube that is about one kilometer and half (under a mile) on each side is enough water for all the people in the world for a day.
- ryukafalz 4y ago
  Right, if we're talking about what this could be like then it's instructive to consider what a client would look like that supported this natively. For example, we might have a "petname" tag that a browser could use to display a petname link like so: <petname ref="pet:4f30b43ec38b43c3abad5d422125900f" proposed_name="Google" /> The browser would then display this in the same way mentioned in the OP; if you already have an entry locally it shows your local name, otherwise it shows the proposed name and marks it as such.