Allow page-relative alias in front matter

[bep]

This is related to #5704 -- but I suspect even more common a problem. I discovered this while testing the new --path-warnings (coming in Hugo 0.55) on some sites.

This is from Let's encrypt's website, a French translation of one of the pages:

---
title: Chaîne de confiance
slug: certificates
top_graphic: 5
aliases: [/certs]
---

It's easy to see what has happened here: They have copied the English original and translated the language strings.

The problem is, however, that /certs will point to the server root, so it will be a little random which language will get the redirect.

We cannot change the meaning of /certs in the example above, but I suggest we do as in #5704 and say that alias definitions not starting with a leading / is considered relative to the language root where they belong, e.g.:

---
title: Chaîne de confiance
slug: certificates
top_graphic: 5
aliases: [certs]
---

/cc @regisphilibert @kaushalmodi @budparr

[kaushalmodi]

say that alias definitions not starting with a leading / is considered relative to the language root where they belong

I have a feeling that that won't be very intuitive.

Seeing aliases: [certs], I think that that's the page aliases respective to its current path.

Is there a possibility to use special variables like $langroot? Example: aliases: [$langroot/certs]

[bep]

Is there a possibility to use special variables like $langroot? Example: aliases: [$langroot/certs]

How is that more intuitive? And would a page alias in the same folder be a common enough use case to even be considered? I did not make that connection with the above. Also, keep in mind that a solution to this would have to be simple (also to implement) to get in the next release -- I need to either fix this or remove/hide the new duplicate path warning thing.

[kaushalmodi]

would a page alias in the same folder be a common enough use case to even be considered?

I can't speak for everyone. But I have uses page aliases many times. It's usually when I have published a post, and then later rename it to something better.

A very common general purpose application is to have shorturl aliases for each post (which I auto generate and insert to front-matter).

One can argue that you can use the redirects too. But having aliases for a page in that page's front matter is useful too.

Just my few cents.

[bep]

I can speak for everyone. But I have uses page aliases many times. It's usually when I have published a post, and then later rename it to something better.

Yea, ok, that's fair. I have probably done the same. I will ... think about it.

[bep]

@kaushalmodi I have thought about this, and I think you are right. Pate-relative aliases would solve the above problem and also be more flexible. Some alias variants would be:

• /myalias; relative to the host root
• ./myalias and myalias: Relative to the original page output file. So, if you change your permalink settings, the aliases will also move.
• ../../myalias; same as above, but we will of course not navigate beyond the context root (i.e. the baseURL).

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