Subject: Announce: Link check micro-HOWTO
Resent-Date: Mon, 8 May 2000 18:39:41 +0200 (MET DST)
Resent-From: ldp-discuss@lists.debian.org
Date: Mon, 08 May 2000 18:39:05 +0200
From: Stein Gjoen <sgjoen@mail.nyx.net>
To: LDP <ldp-discuss@lists.linuxdoc.org>

I am sure I am not the only one who has a problem with link rot
in the links in my HOWTO. Using bookmark check in a browser just
didn't cut the ice, so I just had to hammer out this micro-HOWTO
on how I solved the problem, hoping it can save us all some work.

Start by downloading the link-check.pl Perl script from
        http://www.jwz.org/hacks/check-links.pl
(from   http://www.jwz.org/hacks/marginal.html)

Next run
        sgml2html --split=0 howto.sgml
in order to create a single HTML file, for convenience.

Next run the script
        perl ./check-links.pl HOWTO.html > res.html

and then view the file.

For your convenience I have the output from my own
HOWTO (about 180 links) displayed here:
        http://www.nyx.net/~sgjoen/res.html

Interpretation is straight forward.

It should be noted that links like
        http://www.linuxdoc.org
might get a "moved here temporarily" indication, pointing to
        http://www.linuxdoc.org/
note the extra trailing slash ("/"), which when added makes the
web browser save an extra step in locating the proper page.

Finally do the test again since there is a small shortcoming in
the link checker: a link forwarded to another link is not checked
for reforwarding. Example:
        http://www.a.net/
might give a "Moved to" to
        http://www.b.net/
but testing the line above might again give you a "Moved to" to
        http://www.c.net/
so you have to either iterate until the end or improve the
script.

In the longer term this should probably be part of the
authors guide/resources section.

Regards,
   Stein Gjoen

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