Re: Problems with `@anchor` and `@xrefautomaticsectiontitle`

[Gavin Smith]

On Sat, Feb 20, 2021 at 7:03 AM Werner LEMBERG <wl@gnu.org> wrote:
> The problem:
>   In the anchor reference the corresponding section reference title is
>   shown.  IMHO, this doesn't make much sense because it loses context
>   – in the example above, how shall the reader know that she has to
>   look for 'blubb'?  A better solution is to use the anchor node name
>   if #3 of `@xref` is missing, inspite of `@xrefautomaticsectiontitle
>   on`.
>
>   Note that for automatically generated `@xref` entries (as we have in
>   LilyPond's 'Internal Reference' manual) it is not possible to
>   manually provide a third argument; it would be thus quite valuable
>   if the default could be improved.

Why can't the third argument be automatically generated as well? It
seems inconsistent to use the anchor name in cross-references while
not using node names in cross-references. Moreover in most books if
you saw a reference "see blub" you would be looking for a heading on
the page "blub" which may not always exist
for an @anchor.

I am guessing that blub might be described with @deffn or similar in
which case there would be a heading of sorts, but unfortunately there
isn't a way to make a cross-reference to an index entry (such as would
be created with @deffn) directly.