[pmwiki-devel] Using "!#anchor heading" markup

[John Rankin]

On 04/06/2026 5:34 pm, Petko Yotov wrote:

> On 04/06/2026 03:21, John Rankin wrote:
>
>> 1. For duplicate and not duplicate visible anchors, pagetoc reveals
>> the anchor name through a title='#anchor' attribute. For duplicate
>> visible anchors, pagetoc produces:
>>
>>> "<span style='color: red;' title='#$id'>$DuplicateAnchor</span>"
>>
>> $VisibleAnchorLinks=true adds <a href='#$id'> … </a> to the <span>.
>>
>> I wonder of the core ought to produce a similar output, with the
>> default value of $DuplicateAnchor as ''. Those who prefer a visible
>> sign of a duplicate can set $DuplicateAnchor to a value of their
>> choice.
>
> Wouldn't it be better if the duplicate visible anchor linked to the 
> existing anchor with the same identifier?

Yes it would. I wrote it the way it is for backwards compatibility and 
consistency. The original user wanted Visible Anchors as Links to be a 
true/false option. If true, all visible anchors are links to the named 
anchor; if false, none is. I carried the logic into treatment of visible 
duplicate idNames.

I agree the core can just link to the existing anchor.

>
> I changed it to render like this:
>
>   <a title="#anchor Duplicate anchor" href="#anchor" 
> class="visible-anchor">#</a>
>
> Instead of a separate global variable $DuplicateAnchor, duplicate 
> anchors are styled in pmwiki-core.css, and can be overridden in 
> pub/css/local.css:
>
>   a.visible-anchor:not([id]) {
>     background-color: var(--pmc-yellow2);
>   }
>
> See/test: https://pmwiki.org/t/VisibleAnchors

That is quite subtle to my eyesight (the world gets yellower with age; 
YMMV). A more flexible option could be to retain $VisibleAnchor and 
$DuplicateAnchor, and SDV($DuplicateAnchor, $VisibleAnchor); in the 
core. Those who wish to, can over-ride the default.

It's looking good. I may have to update the recipe again once the 
changes to pmwiki are finalised, to avoid markup rule conflicts.

J