Re: [OT] Download page on ruby-lang has numeric URL

Hugh Sasse wrote:
> On Tue, 20 Jun 2006, mathew wrote:
>   
>> You have learned two falsehoods. See
>> <URL:http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI>
>>     
>
> I'll partially concede those.  However that document says:
>
>    A lot of people don't know that servers such as Apache give you a
>   lot of control over a flexible relationship between the URI of an
>   object and where a file which represents it actually is in a file
>   system. 
>
> So in practice they do change.

Yes, in practice all URLs change eventually.

The point of the article is (a) creation-date-based numbers in URLs are 
a very sensible way to allocate URLs, and (b) once you've allocated a 
URL, it's best not to change it gratuitously.

Follow those two rules, and the Ruby download page is explained.

If you've learned that URLs with date numbers in are temporary, then 
you've simply learned something false. Countless CMSs and blog systems 
use permalink URLs as per the W3 article.


mathew