Robust Hyperlinks

Robust links for hypertext systems.

Abstract from "Robust Hyperlinks Cost Just Five Words Each", Thomas A. Phelps and Robert Wilensky, Division of Computer Science, University of California, Berkeley:

We propose robust hyperlinks as a solution to the problem of broken hyperlinks. A robust hyperlink is a URL augmented with a small "signature", computed from the referenced document. The signature can be submitted as a query to web search engines to locate the document. It turns out that very small signatures are sufficient to readily locate individual documents out of the many millions on the web.
Robust hyperlinks exhibit a number of desirable qualities: they can be computed and exploited automatically, are small and cheap to compute (so that it is practical to make all hyperlinks robust), do not require new server or infrastructure support, can be rolled out reasonably well in the existing URL syntax, can be used to automatically retrofit existing links to make them robust, and are easy to understand. In particular, one can start using robust hyperlinks now, as servers and web pages are mostly compatible as is, while clients can increase their support in the future.
Robust hyperlinks are one example of using the web to bootstrap new features onto itself.

Example of Robust Hyperlink for retrieving the paper above:
http://www.google.com/search?q=thinkinginpostscript+cityquilt+fernec+planetext+peroperties

[Note: the only real contra of this proposal as is seems its reliance on search engines (a centralized, little scalable solution). -- MaD70

Robust Software^*, which is now integrated into …
… Multivalent browser (old link The Multivalent Browser -- A Platform for New Ideas^*).

HomePage of Robert Wilensky.
Robust Hyperlinks and Robust Locations home page.
Robust Hyperlinks and Locations, D-Lib Magazine, July/August 2000, Volume 6 Number 7/8, ISSN 1082-9873.
Robust Hyperlinks: Cheap, Everywhere, Now, Proceedings of Digital Documents and Electronic Publishing (DDEP00), Munich, Germany, 13-15 September 2000.
Robust Intra-document Locations, Proceedings of the 9th World Wide Web Conference.
Robust Linking: Robust Hyperlinks and Robust Locations, a seminar.

Of historical interest:

Robust Hyperlinks and Robust Locations Home Page^*.
Robust Hyperlinks Cost Just Five Words Each^*.
Robust Hyperlinks and Archival Intermemory^*, a PowerPoint presentation.

* archived copies, courtesy of the Internet Archive Wayback Machine.

Robust Hyperlinks

Of historical interest:

See also: