Re: reference manual formatting suggestions

[Kevin Vermeer <reemrevnivek@...>]

On Wed, Oct 13, 2010 at 9:44 PM, David Manura <dm.lua@math2.org> wrote:

A couple suggestions on the reference manual formatting...

(1) I often would like the anchors to be visible.  The problem occurs
when I'm reading some section (e.g. "xpcall") that I then want to
cite.  This currently requires navigating back to the contents page,
finding the section name, and right clicking and selecting to copy the
link location.  In the Python docs, hovering the mouse over a section
title displays a paragraph link, which you can click to place it in
the address bar or right click and select to copy the link.

 http://docs.python.org/library/string.html#string.atof

With Firefox  (Note: Chrome and Safari have plugins for this behavior), I 

just highlight the title, right-click, and choose "View selection source" to 

bring up a window containing (ex):

   <h3><a name="pdf-xpcall"><code>xpcall (f, err)</code></a></h3> 

Then, appending a hash and the name string to the URL, 

   http://www.lua.org/manual/5.1/manual.html#pdf-xpcall

gives the same result as going back to the contents page and copying 

the link. 

I agree, a better way to get these anchors would be handy, but going to 

the source isn't too hard. 

> (7)  's probably omissible.

On this point, I disagree. 

 If they were used for indentation, then CSS  (as you pointed out) would 

be preferable..  However, they're used as they should be - To prevent 

linked words (not already separated by hyphenation) like "ANSI&nbsp;

C" or (more commonly) Lua versions such as the ubiquitous "Lua&nbsp;

5.1" from breaking.  Was that easy to read, or would you rather have those

on the same line?