It also helps on web pages where the link doesn't match the visible text. Eg hover on the name of a poster.

visit this forum using lynx(or similar)

further thoughts and/or questions, does a screen-reader(for those who require such) stumble over truncated content?

With the (poorly written) FluxBB software this forum uses, it is hard-coded to occur above 55 characters. (The internal forum links are 53 characters, so do not trigger it.)

The auto-linking functionality can be bypassed by deleting the entire protocol, which means also avoiding the truncating functionality, is less ugly than deleting just one letter, and can be either screenshotted or copy-pasted without issue, and without need to manually add h to the start.

It can be done by holding ctrl whilst tapping del twice - compared to deleting a single letter it's a tiny amount of extra work for the author, and removes the need for readers to add a letter.

(Also, if an unlinked URL is the only thing on a line, it can be quickly selected by triple-clicking.)

In that spirit, the h-chopping is ideal.

Perhaps for some browsers that I don’t use.

FF, Chromium and Konqueror, when you hover over a shortened link, show it in full in a line at the bottom of the screen.
And saving links as a screenshot is inconvenient, in my opinion. Then you have to type all this Chinese writing by hand.

As a result, there is extra work for the one who deletes h and the one who then opens this link.

1. e.g. ttps://wiki.hyperbola.info/doku.php?id=en:manual:reference_installation is a h-chopped link

2. e.g. https://wiki.hyperbola.info/doku.php?id … stallation is that unchopped link in plain text

3. e.g. https://wiki.hyperbola.info/doku.php?id … stallation is that link with simple "url" tag wrapping:

   [url]https://wiki.hyperbola.info/doku.php?id=en:manual:reference_installation[/url]

4. e.g. (the link) is that link with "url" wrapping that split acutal link from highlight text:

   [url=https://wiki.hyperbola.info/doku.php?id=en:manual:reference_installation](the link)[/url]

5. e.g. https://wiki.hyperbola.info/doku.php?id=en:manual:reference_installation is that link likewise split and used as both link and as high-light text after an initial space:

    [url=https://wiki.hyperbola.info/doku.php?id=en:manual:reference_installation] https://wiki.hyperbola.info/doku.php?id=en:manual:reference_installation[/url]

   (without initial space in the highlight, the forum renderer reduces it to option 3)

I suppose the ordinary poster would use option 2 as it requires little to no thought around the resulting link presentation.

Option 5 is of course "The Correct Way" technically but it's rather fiddly to achieve and somewhat prone to discrepancy between the actual link and its highlight.. And option 5 actually also allows for, say, tracking parameters on the actual link without showing them.

On the other hand the general safety advice would be: Don't follow any link without first copy-paste it into a plain text editor so you can review it and be satisfied about its parts. In that spirit, the h-chopping is ideal.

@stargate-sg1-cheyenne-mtn . . . I understand your reasons but wonder how many users actually screenshot a post. I don't know that I have ever done that. I have saved posts as text files and then manually corrected links if they are broken.

P.S. I can only add, I don’t know about you, but links without the letter h don’t add joy or convenience to me. Completely unnecessary gestures.

here is a link to one of your recent posts where the URL is truncated and, as such, in a screenshot it is impossible to know what the real complete URL is(hopefully this makes sense and helps to explain more fully what was explained earlier):
https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?pid=48767#p48767

nevertheless, thanks for the thoughts and posts!

you will see that the forum software truncates the complete URL

I do it differently, I just paste the URL into the Quick reply window, the forum itself adds the url tag to it.