Joel de Guzman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > David Abrahams wrote: >> Joel de Guzman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >> >>>>That's what you have to do, neh? You click once to get to the TOC, >>>>then you right-click the link at the top of the page. >>> >>>Tedious and possibly error prone, IMO ;) >> I should add that it could only be considered tedious and >> error-prone >> from the POV of someone who wants to provide a link to the section. >> For the ordinary browsing user, who wants to see where in the overall >> outline of the document he is currently, the no-op link is >> *definitely* tedious: it doesn't do anything! It's also confusing, of >> course. >> I think serving the ordinary browsing user is much more important >> than >> serving the guy who wants to provide a link to the section, especially >> if the difference is just one click. > > Not exactly true. In fact it benefits the one who will use the link > more than the one who does the link. First, let me say that indeed > the MPL docs, as far as headings are concerned, does it the same > way as QuickBook.
Then you must be looking at a different set of MPL docs than I am. Or you're using a different browser, that acts completely differently from all the browsers I've used. For example, the "Terminology" heading at http://www.boost.org/libs/mpl/doc/refmanual/terminology.html links back to http://www.boost.org/libs/mpl/doc/refmanual.html#id529, which is an entry in the top-level TOC of the refmanual. The fact that many of the pages are broken up in such a fine-grained way may make it hard to see that it's doing exactly the same thing as the other docutils-generated docs, because you don't see the page scrolled to show the TOC entry right at the top of the screen when the pages are small. I guess it would be a lot better if the links went back into http://www.boost.org/libs/mpl/doc/refmanual/refmanual_toc.html rather than up a level into the fine-grained pages. > In my other post, I posed a usage scenario. I'll repeat parts of it > here for reference. > > Anyway, imagine I have a doc that links to the "Invariants" section > of the MPL doc's "ForwardSequence" concept at > http://tinyurl.com/omouw. Okay, that link works differently from the other ones I've seen. I guess I don't understand the logic in use here. Aleksey must have made some interesting choices when he built the docutils backend that generates multi-page documents. > Thanks to the self links of headings in the MPL docs, I can know > the exact location. For reference it is at: > > http://www.boost.org/libs/mpl/doc/refmanual/forward-sequence.html#invariants > > AFAICT, there is no way to know that if the heading itself is > not self linked. Sure there is. You click the link, which takes you to a page with a TOC entry that points to the heading. Then you right-click the TOC entry and copy the link location. > The only way is to link to the page and say, "ok, please go to > link http://tinyurl.com/omouw and see section Invariants." How > usable is that? The user will have to search a potentially long > page for the particular /Invariants/ section. 1) Imagine if the > page is long. 2) What if there are more than one /Invariants/ > in various sub-sections? Yes, it's a useful tool. I just think it's worth one more click from you in order to make the link generally useful for browsing users. -- Dave Abrahams Boost Consulting www.boost-consulting.com ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by xPML, a groundbreaking scripting language that extends applications into web and mobile media. Attend the live webcast and join the prime developer group breaking into this new coding territory! http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid=110944&bid=241720&dat=121642 _______________________________________________ Boost-docs mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe and other administrative requests: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/boost-docs
