I started thinking again about converting blogs to print when I wrote the post on how "Language Log" became Far from the Madding Gerund. The editor, Tom Sumner had the rather clever idea of putting links into sidenotes.
BlogCollector v2.0 from LAB Aprise! was just released [May 2007]. Since there are so relatively few blog converters available, let alone FREE, I wanted to go back and see how they were handling links within blogs.
Nothing is said about links. :-(
BlogPrinting from QOOP, Inc. is one of the latest that I've found. Not free. {The price includes printing.] Again, nothing is said about how links within posts are handled. :-(
Blurb's BookSmart™ is also FREE and will convert your blog. [You only pay if you have them print your book.] "Imports and maps blog text, images, comments, and links into a professionally designed template, producing a draft book in real time." At least with BookSmart the links survive. One has no idea what they look like on the to-be-printed page - most likely underlined with no external references. That's the same decision that Warren Meyer made. Do you see now why Pullum and Liberman's book is so fascinating? The URLs of the links are in sidenotes.
There's a super discussion of links, sidenotes, footnotes at Rands In Repose Forums. You'll find it in the comments section. Clarko started it off:
Sidenote: If you're looking for an example of how not to handle the transition from hypertext to dead tree, look no further than Far From The Madding Gerund.The links become ghosted chunks of text that match up to footnotes (sidenotes, rather), which dominate the text and distract the eye far more than they should. A lot of "this article" and "click here" happening, accompanied by massive sidenotes with URLs.
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