Community Wishlist Survey 2022/Editing/Native support for alternative section anchors/Proposal

  • Problem: In order to create shorthand or stable links to sections, editors create fragment IDs (aka anchors) that point to sections that differ from the visible headings. This can be done using {{anchor}}, as in == {{anchor|Anchor}} Heading ==, or its substituted form, == <span id="Anchor"></span> Heading ==, but the first results in bad section links—as in /* {{anchor|Anchor}} Heading */, which shows up as →{{anchor|Anchor}} Heading—while the second is less self-evident as to what it's for, especially to newcomers. Another solution is to put the {{anchor}} or <span>...</span> at the end of the previous section, but this doesn't show up when editing the section (and shows up at the end when editing the previous), which is quite confusing.
  • Proposed solution: We need a way to add fragment IDs inside section headings that 1) communicates clearly what it's doing and 2) doesn't affect section links. E.g. a parser function like {{#sectionanchor:Anchor name}} that can be used anywhere inside a section and results in <span id="Anchor_name"></span> prepended at the top of (or inserted before) the nearest Hn element before the function call.
  • Who would benefit: Editors
  • More comments:
  • Phabricator tickets:
  • Proposer: Nardog (talk) 07:00, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]