Comment 4 for bug 325982

2009/9/9 Karl Fogel <email address hidden>:
> micahg and I had a long conversation about this in IRC.
>
> Summary is: even though most of the fields in that URL just represent
> defaults, they still hold information.  If Launchpad's defaults were to
> change, the meaning of the URL wouldn't change -- unless we shortened
> the URL, thus depending on Launchpad to know what the defaults should
> be: then if Launchpad's defaults changed, the meaning of the query would
> change too.
>
> I'm not sure whether that means the proposed fix is a good or bad idea.
> However, it does mean that this bug might be alleviated by a fix to bug
> #317136 ("Launchpad should offer a 'Get tinyURL link' option for each
> page"), which has its own rather intricate discussion.

There are two other things to do, which are related to this problem.

1. Get rid of the 'field.' prefix for form fields.
2. Make it possible to save searches in Launchpad itself. If we do
that, people don't have to rely on keeping search URLs for referring
back to searches, and then we have to worry less about the defaults
changing for absent fields.

Finally, the problem with defaults is only manifested in some fields -
enumeration fields mostly. Fields that are empty can safely be dropped
without worrying that the semantics will change later on.