Re: [docbook-apps] HTMLHelp: links to explicitly named anchors seem broken

["Paul A. Hoadley" <paulh@logicsquad.net>]

On Tue, May 06, 2003 at 01:46:13PM +0930, Paul A. Hoadley wrote:

> Here is an excerpt from the generated toc.hhc:
> 
>       <param name="Name" value="Utilities">
>       <param name="Local" value="ch02s02.html#id2978761">
>     </OBJECT><UL><LI> <OBJECT type="text/sitemap">
>       <param name="Name" value="Notepad">
>       <param name="Local" value="ch02s02.html#sec:notepad">
> 
> As an example, the TOC link to 'Utilities' is fine, but the link to
> the explicitly named 'Notepad' sends the browser searching for a
> non-local URL.  Debugging is not straightforward, since the HTML Help
> browser doesn't give much away about what it's doing.

The HTML Help browser (which I assume is essentially IE) doesn't seem
to like the colon in the anchor name.  Simply removing that colon
fixes the problem.  Colons are specifically allowed in NAME tokens:

http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/types.html#type-cdata

Even more bizarre, it is only the TOC links that are broken by this.
Anchors with colons in their names perform just fine within the HTML
pages themselves.  Has anyone been bitten by this before?


-- 
Paul.

mailto:paulh@logicsquad.net
mailto:phoadley@maths.adelaide.edu.au