[Rd] New URL redirect checks

[Kevin Wright]

Isn't the whole concept of DOI basically link-shortening/redirecting?

For example, this link
https://doi.org/10.2134/agronj2016.07.0395
redirects to
https://acsess.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.2134/agronj2016.07.0395

As a side note, I got so fed up with CRAN check complaints about (perfectly
valid) re-directs that I refuse to use the \url{} tag anymore.

Kevin


On Thu, Sep 17, 2020 at 8:32 AM Yihui Xie <xie using yihui.name> wrote:

> I don't have an opinion on the URL shorteners, but how about the
> original question? Redirection can be extremely useful in general.
> Shortening URLs is only one of its possible applications. FWIW, CRAN
> uses (303) redirect itself, e.g.,
> https://cran.r-project.org/package=MASS is redirected to
> https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/MASS/index.html Should these
> "canonical" CRAN links be disallowed in packages, too? Just as another
> example, https://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/base/release.html is
> redirected to the latest Windows installer of R (through the <meta>
> tag).
>
> If the intent of the new URL redirect check is to disallow using URL
> shorteners like bit.ly or nyti.ms, that may be fair, but it it is to
> disallow using any URLs that are redirected, I think this CRAN policy
> may be worth a reconsideration.
>
> Regards,
> Yihui
> --
> https://yihui.org
>
>
> On Thu, Sep 17, 2020 at 3:26 AM Gábor Csárdi <csardi.gabor using gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > Right, I am sorry, I did not realize the security aspect here. I guess
> > I unconsciously treated CRAN package authors as a trusted source.
> >
> > Thanks for the correction and clarification, and to CRAN for
> > implementing these checks. :)
> >
> > G.
> >
> > On Wed, Sep 16, 2020 at 10:50 PM Duncan Murdoch
> > <murdoch.duncan using gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > On 16/09/2020 4:51 p.m., Simon Urbanek wrote:
> > > > I can't comment for CRAN, but generally, shorteners are considered
> security risk so regardless of the 301 handling I think flagging those is a
> good idea. Also I think it is particularly bad to use them in manuals
> because it hides the target so the user has no idea what hey will get.
> > >
> > > I agree, and we do have \href{}{} in Rd files and similar in other
> > > formats for giving text of a link different than the URL if the URL is
> > > inconveniently long.  There's still a bit of a security issue though:
> > > the built in help browser (at least in MacOS) doesn't show the full URL
> > > when you hover over the link, as most browsers do.  So one could have
> > >
> > > \href{https://disney.org}{https://horrible.web.site}
> > >
> > > Duncan Murdoch
> > >
> > >
> > > >
> > > > Cheers,
> > > > Simon
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >> On Sep 17, 2020, at 5:35 AM, Gábor Csárdi <csardi.gabor using gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > > >>
> > > >> Dear all,
> > > >>
> > > >> the new CRAN URL checks flag HTTP 301 redirects. While I understand
> > > >> the intent, I think this is unfortunate, because several URL
> shortener
> > > >> services use 301 redirects, and often a shorter URL is actually
> better
> > > >> in a manual page than a longer one that can be several lines long in
> > > >> the console and also potentially truncated in the PDF manual.
> > > >>
> > > >> Some example shorteners that are flagged:
> > > >>
> > > >>> db <- tools:::url_db(c("https://nyti.ms", "https://t.co/mtXLLfYOYE"),
> "README")
> > > >>> tools:::check_url_db(db)
> > > >> URL: https://nyti.ms (moved to https://www.nytimes.com/)
> > > >> From: README
> > > >> Status: 200
> > > >> Message: OK
> > > >>
> > > >> URL: https://t.co/mtXLLfYOYE (moved to
> > > >> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-47975564)
> > > >> From: README
> > > >> Status: 200
> > > >> Message: OK
> > > >>
> > > >> ______________________________________________
> > > >> R-devel using r-project.org mailing list
> > > >> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
> > > >>
> > > >
> > > > ______________________________________________
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> > > >
> > >
> >
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-- 
Kevin Wright

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