Re: HTML anchors in links to nodes

[Patrice Dumas]

On Sun, May 05, 2019 at 09:35:46PM +0100, Gavin Smith wrote:
> Links to nodes in HTML output currently always have a filename and a 
> fragment identifier, as follows:
> 
> https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Lisp-Data-Types.html#Lisp-Data-Types
> 
> "Lisp-Data-Types" is repeated.
> 
> I wonder if it would be possible not to output the "#Lisp-Data-Types" 
> part of it.

For links to external manuals, I don't think that we should omit the
target.  But for internal links, I think that it is possible to
determine if there is only one node in an output file and do not output
a target in that case. I can do the code after the 17 may if needed.

> 
> This would make the HTML output simpler. It would also mean that the 
> position of the page when it was loaded didn't depend on the length of 
> the node: a link to a long node doesn't go exactly to the top of the 
> page, but a link to a node which fits in a single screenful does.  
> Compare
> https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Lists.html#Lists
> with
> https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Index.html#Index
> The latter is scrolled slightly.
> 
> This will become more of an annoyance when there is keyboard 
> navigation; for example, continually pressing "n" to go to the next node 
> will cause the page to wobble up and down according to the length of the 
> nodes.
> 
> It wouldn't be completely trivial to make this change, as it should only 
> happen if the output is split by node.  There is also a case, I seem to 
> remember, where more than one node can be output in the same file if the 
> system has a case-insensitive file system.
>