Ok, I now get what you want, and while hypothetically its doable I have to admit it makes me cringe. What you are saying is that while rendering a page for every node on that page we have to load the authors link options when we render it. For a big thread that could be many authors, even assuming most have no such setting its a lot of work however you look at it.

I seem to think about this linking mechanism differently to you. To me they are ways to

• Provide dynamic links for site purposes. This includes things like the pmdev:// and id:// links, which can't really be done any other way.
• Provide an easy way to do "classed links" for things like searches and lookups, examples being dict:// and jargon:// and cpan:// links.

for these tasks IMO it makes no sense for you to be able to foist your own interpretation of these links on me. It does however make sense for you to be able to change the way those links look to you. For instance it may be that you have a subscription to some dictionary that is superior to which free one we happen to be linking to at the time, and it seems reasonable that you might want to use the one you have paid for instead. Likewise if you want cpan:// links to point at some alternate resource there is no reason not to.

But I dont think that you should be able to change the way those links look to me, at least not through this type of mechanism, as its perfectly easy for you to just link directly as appropriate. An example of this is id:// links and named node links. Part of the point of such links is that regardless of which url you are looking at the site and which node is linked you end up in the right place (and thus not logged out) when you follow the links. Forcing your interpretation of such a link on me totally defeats the purpose, you might have well just hardlinked with an A tag. Likewise for the cpan:// tags or similar types, why should you be able to decide what dictionary I visit? Or rather whats the point of doing via a dynamic link? Saving a few chars when typing?

I can see some benefit in coming up with a template system for what you see, but i dont see the benefit of the other way round, especially given the relative costs of the two.

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