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Comment by yk | Hacker News Reader

It should be possible to link to individual pages. ( So that one can show where the opening line of Neuromancer or the first paragraph of The Library of Babel is located.) But otherwise really cool.

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On average, the link would be at least as long as the book.

I think yk's idea is excellent - I'm actually working on it right now. You're correct that the book locations need to be about as long as the book to provide sufficient unique values - but it isn't humanly or temporally possible for people to bookmark that many pages - so a separate index of bookmarked pages could use much shorter urls.

and please make the bookmarks unguessable and private. I want to sent moderately private letters, that where already "written" in the library :)

I'm glad you suggested that - will do.

letters where sent :)

I'm still amazed at the project, thank you

Not if you let the first linked page be site.com/1, the next one site.com/2 and so on, I think.

How does that even make sense? Taking a lower base will only require more characters.

Yes, even then.

Sure "1" and "2" are pretty short. And even "57834573495879436129386943" is pretty short.

But the average link would have so many digits, I couldn't post it in this comment.

The bookmarks would only need to map to the book locations - you would only need sufficient values for the number of bookmarked pages, not the entire range of possibilities.

I created a bookmarkable link on the book pages - and you can title them yourself, so they will remain private if you like.

Thank you for the excellent suggestion.

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