Re: xref labels: "Chapter 33", "Section 33.2"

Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> writes:
> On Mon, Feb 16, 2015 at 05:05:39PM +1300, Craig Ringer wrote:
>> I can't seem to make an <xref linkend="spi"> render the <title>...</title>
>> element text. The DocBook documentation implies that this should be the
>> default; e.g. if you have:

> Have you read README.links in the sgml top-level directory?

I think Craig's question is more about our overall house style/policy, ie,
how do we want such links to be rendered? I am definitely *not* in favor
of authors of portions of the docs trying to impose their own opinions on
individual links, which is where his question seems to be leading. But it
is a fair question whether we'd like to change the currently existing
global rendering decision, and if so what would be the best way to
implement that.

I suspect that the answer is different in different output formats,
for example PDF format would probably prefer oldschool chapter/section
numbers even if we go over to names in HTML versions. (Consider the
manual printed on dead trees: named links would be of *zero* value there,
while you could still flip to a numbered section reasonably quickly.)
This is another reason for not thinking that hacking the text link-by-link
is an appropriate answer.

regards, tom lane