Suppose one is looking at a Usenet article.
How does one synthesize a useful URL? One way is with formulas
such as
http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&selm=1ee2tc3.vy63uq1gycw8sN@207-229-150-45.d.enteract.com, an example of the
form whose crucial element is
selm=message-ID
.
An alternate spelling for the same (?) is
http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:<messageID>
.
Google has apparently set its interface to be most succinct for display of threads, of which http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&th=e01376f9a4ca5501 is an example.
Old DN-style article numbers can be used in May 2001 to bring single articles into view. http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&selm=an_650092068 is an example of such a formula. Note the "650092068" here is a DN article number.
Jorn is working on a tutorial on URL hacking.
What follows hasn't yet been updated to the Google era. I leave it here for now in anticipation of eventual re-write and consolication.
[To-do: tie this page in with the indexes I maintain on newsgroup archives. Also, explain to newcomers how to reach deeper history with DN; I get a lot of requests for that.]
[Explain alt.fan.dejanews.]
There are also a few Web sites which wrap DejaNews; that is, they offer superior interfaces for searching, and/or display results more conveniently. The raw work of searching they continue to hand off to DejaNews, for they don't maintain their own archives. The examples I know in this category are
[Explain WWW::Search, search, AutoSearch, WWW::Search::DejaNews.]
[Explain others. Explain plans for future.]
The angle brackets are considered part of the Message-ID. Thus, in references to the Message-ID, such as the ihave/sendme and cancel control messages, the angle brackets are included.
[Explain "[ST_rn=ps]" formulae.]
Jeffrey Hobbs rightly points out that all the '['-containing URLs are non-conformant; '[', according to RFC XXXX, requires encoding as "...=dnc/%5b%5d/..."
[x$NN vs. www vs. search] [synthesize grammar]
Kyler Laird whipped up a formula in about 100 seconds that reports on, for example, Guido van Rossum's most recent postings. Kyler cautions that, as a "quick kludge ... it might/should change."