[whatwg] Idea: Links w/o end anchors (is possible)

[Tab Atkins Jr.]

On Wed, Jul 22, 2009 at 7:02 AM, ppj<ppj at concept67.net> wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 22, 2009 at 06:50:33AM -0400, Darxus at ChaosReigns.com wrote:
>> On 07/22, ppj wrote:
>> > e.g. <a href='...' search='...'>link text</a>
>>
>> I've wished for this a number of times, but I think I would be more
>> interested in the spec saying that a document should include id tags at
>> every point someone might want to link to which the author of the document
>> is willing to provide.
>>
>> It seems odd to me that the definition of the id attribute doesn't mention
>> its use as a fragment identifier.
>> http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/dom.html#the-id-attribute
>>
>> --
>
> Hi,
> We played with filling documents with ids a lot. This is not a bad idea, but
> the users (imho) want to link to text first and foremost. So I'm
> suggesting we could let them.
>
> Folks have suggested XPointer vs. attribute hack on the <a> element. But I would
> prefer the element to have something superficial ordinary people can
> understand, even if behind the scenes the browser turns that into XPointer.
> What's the present rate of user uptake of XPointer?

It would be relatively simple to expose a UI that allows one to point
at some text and automatically generate an XPointer to the element
containing that text.  Assuming that you could then generate a url
with that information (which would take browser cooperation), you'd be
golden.

I am generally against anything that would change the target of a
link, but isn't representable in the actual url.  Anything I can
click, I should be able to copypaste into my browser's location bar
and get identical results.

~TJ