Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

I just skipped the shortcut. Instead of writing <lj user="maryrobinette">, I wrote the HTML that tag expands to when you view a page that uses it (I did 'view source' on a couple of test pages). To refer to an InsaneJournal user:

<span style='white-space: nowrap;'>
<a href='http://USER.insanejournal.com/profile'>
<img src='http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif' alt='[info]'
width='17' height='17' style='vertical-align: bottom; border: 0;' /></a>
<a href='http://USER.insanejournal.com/'><b>USER</b></a></span>

and to refer to a LiveJournal user:

<a href='http://USER.livejournal.com/profile'>
<img src='http://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif' alt='[info]'
width='17' height='17' style='vertical-align: bottom; border: 0;' />
</a><a href='http://USER.livejournal.com/'><b>USER</b></a>

(There probably ought to be a nowrap <span> around both of them. I think that's to keep the icon from being orphaned at the end of a line with the username on the next line, but I haven't noticed a difference in behaviour yet (maybe I need to watch more closely).)

I have those stuck in handy text files to copy into an entry I'm composing when I need them. Then I just do a search-and-replace to stick the username I want to use in place of the string 'USER', and presto, the right symbol and the right link on each of the sites I copy the entry to. So not only will LJ users show up on IJ with LJ-heads, IJ users will show up on LJ with IJ's Tweak-face. (Some of the other sites use the default LJ symbol, so folks can't tell at a glance they're from elsewhere, but this way the link still goes to the right place.) As I start quoting more DeadJournal folks, I'll make a handy cut-and-paste bit for that as well, and so on for other sites.

It's more work than just using <lj user="[...]">, but I couldn't find a better way. At some point I'll get around to either making a macro forr my editor (vim) that saves me a step, or I'll modify my LJ client or the cross-posting script that invokes it so that I can write <ij user="">, <dj user=""> and so on and have them expanded before being sent to the servers. I haven't gotten around to that yet.

When I want to refer to someone from a different site in a comment, I copy/paste the appropriate blank and replace 'USER' with their name by hand, since the web browsers I use don't seem to have a search-and-replace feature on text-entry boxes. (*sigh* Oh, to be able to use the powerful commands my fingers know everywhere...) But that situation doesn't come up so often.

I do wish there were a much easier, universal way to do this, like a site parameter to the <lj> tag. I'm comfortable doing what I'm doing, but I'd like something so easy that everyone else could adopt it quickly, especially since I'm seeing more and more cross-site user-references as communities split among services and then cross-pollinate, and it'd be more convenient for me as a reader if everyone did something like this. Alas, without a server-side solution picked up by all the sites (some are using older versions of the LJ software), I'd have to come up with separate shortcuts for every browser/client/OS/habits combination folks are using.