On 12/31/13 9:39 AM, Sönke Ludwig wrote:
Am 31.12.2013 17:48, schrieb Andrei Alexandrescu:
In a nutshell, "good cross-referencing is hard".
I don't think so at all (on the technical level). What is the issue with
using the #identifier.chain pattern for example? It seems simple enough
and I can't imagine a more natural thing than to reference symbols in
documentation the same way as in code.
I see #identifier.chain similar to e.g. $(X identifier.chain) so no
issue with that. It just adds more syntax without necessity. I'd instead
work on improving macros to generate proper xrefs out of $(X ...) rather
than adding new syntax. But either way is fine.
That's exactly the
experience of anyone who's created an index. In publishing there are
automatic index generators and they're universally known to be vastly
inferior to professional-produced ones. I've created my own index by
hand for TDPL and it's been difficult, but probably the result is better
than an automated index.
But index generation is a higher level issue. The basis for it is to
have some kind of universal anchor that can be used as a reference.
#identifier.chain or $(REF identifier.chain) is nothing more than that
and just solves the issue of supporting arbitrary nested scopes and
different file system or document hierarchies.
Agreed. In all likelihood I misunderstood something because I thought
you were referring to cross-referencing text without any user intervention.
Andrei
