Re: [BUG] The documentation webserver gives 404s [9.5.4 (release_9.5.4-3-g6dc785 @ <censored>)]

[Tim Cross]

Ihor Radchenko <yantar92@gmail.com> writes:

> Tim Cross <theophilusx@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> I do have an alternative suggestion which may help. Given that the
>> 'broken' URLs are actually from external links to old documentation
>> which has been removed, what we could do is create a more informative
>> 404 page. Once users are on the 'real' site, the case issue does not
>> exist. It is only a problem due to outdated URLs on external sites like
>> stack overflow. Instead of just saying 404 Not Found, the page could say
>> the requested URL was not found and is likely a link to old outdated doc
>> documentation. The page could include a link to the main orgmode
>> page. This would be a fairly simple 'fix' that would improve user
>> experience to some degree. 
>
> This sounds like a good idea.
> I am not sure if it is feasible, but the 404 page could also provide
> suggestions based on similar existing links. I have something like
> https://list.orgmode.org/orgmode/83tu89b7pr.fsf@gnu.org/ in mind.
>

Sorry, I don't understand the relevance of that link (it seems to be to
a discussion about GC size?).

Yes, you should be able to use JS to examine the URL which failed and
transform it by making the first character of each word in the url
filename upper case. Essentially do what was proposed with the rewrite
rules, but which wouldn't have the same performance hit as it would only
be triggered when incorrect URLs were entered and wold run in the browser.

The only downside is it wouldn't work with non JS based browsers (like
eww). If the server had support for server side scripting (perl, ruby,
etc) it could be done so that it would work with all browsers by doing
the rendering server side.