8.3 Brain Damage

If you're generating HTML mechanically, why not simply create long filenames, so that URLs themselves carry the information stashed in the HTML header (e.g., "January_1994/Reviews/Low-Cost_Laser_Printers.html")? That I didn't think of this at first shows the brain damage caused by years in the mental prison of the DOS 8.3 filename.

It's nice for URLs to be descriptive, but it's not necessary. What is essential is that they're unique and immutable. My scheme, which just enumerates sections and articles, guarantees uniqueness -- there will be only one art\9401\sec9\art7.htm in the collection. But will that URL immutably refer to the January '94 review of laser printers? Not if we find that we've forgotten to include another January '94 article and then decide to regenerate the collection. Uh oh. Everything gets renumbered. This isn't a problem for Web site users because the navigation and search functions adjust to the new structure. But if you've saved a bookmark to art\9401\sec9\art7.htm, you'll be upset if I renumber the collection.

I'm not aware of gaps in the 1994 collection that's on the Web now, and I don't expect we'll need to renumber it. But I do want to try using descriptive URLs for 1995 and future content.