One of the things that I enjoy about the Perlmonks website is how easy it can be to create links to both internal and external content. Using features such as

[id://XXXXX]
[cpan://XXXXX]
[google://XXXX]
[download]

and the list goes on (at What shortcuts can I use for linking to other information?). After watching some monks have a heated discussion in the CB involving some acronyms, one of the monks asked what some of the acronyms were. It was easy enough for someone to explain them, but it gave me an idea for one new link, which then spawned into three ideas.

• [whatis://XXXXX]
• Idea: As I'm sure some of us are aware, there's a technical dictionary located at http://www.whatis.com (that actually forwards to http://whatis.techtarget.com). This dictionary can be used to look up various technical terms for definition, and as such I thought it might be handy to have a [whatis://XXXXX] item, so that if we're trying to explain a certain feature, we could easily use this link to look up the definition.
• URL for lookup of XXXXX:
  http://whatis.techtarget.com/wsearchResults/1,290214,,00.html?query=XXXXX
• Example:
  [whatis://SMTP] -> SMTP
• Cons: I know that Google could probably generate a result that'd be satisfactory enough, but whatis.com really does have some good content in spots.
• [dictionary://XXXXX]
  • Idea: Along similar lines to the whatis.com idea, this would allow for a dictionary lookup at http://www.dictionary.com with another type of link for convenience.
  • URL for lookup of XXXXX:
    http://www.dictionary.com/search?q=XXXXX
  • Example:
    [dictionary://serendipity] -> serendipity
  • Cons: Even [dictionary://XXXXX] is a little long to type, but I think it could come in handy.

I'd figure that naturally, all links of this nature would be able to use the pipe syntax to change the name of the resulting link, but leaving the content of the link the same. Seeing as this sort of linking is already implemented with things like Google, it seems to me that these new links would be fairly easy to implement. I could be dead wrong though, I don't know what Everything looks like under the hood (yet).

I'd really like some feedback, if anyone wants to take the time. I figure that these ideas are fun and some may not consider them worth implementing, but I wanted to share.

~Brian

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