I would like wiki to have the capability to create a [[link]] to a specific point inside
another (or the same) article. This would be analogous to the HTML syntax as in...
href="www.somewhere#specificPointInside". As a Wiki feature, this could support
two ways to specify the #specificPointInside.
(1) use a hidden anchor (as in HTML <a> tags),
or (2) use a construct similar to XPointer, but using notation such as == or * to denote
nodes. It would be great if this Wiki construct supported regular expressions and
nesting.
For example, [[javaArticle#==history.*/*[2] ]], would mean:
link to the 2nd bullet in the title starting with "history" of the javaArticle
article.
(Explanation: the # means that the following is a link to a point inside the article.
The "==history" refers to the wiki title construct. The " .* "
after hister is the regular expression code for "skip any number of characters to the
end of the line."
The "/" after that indicates that the following code is a narrowing
navigation within the construct just seen on the left of the /.
Finally, the "*[2]" means match the bullet "*" nodes and return the
2nd one found.
)
This XPointer-like approach would make the links flexible and eliminate the need for a new
article to edit an already-existing article just to put in a link to a point inside that
article. This feature would be useful when long articles contain a number of key facts in
a subject that new articles on the subject would like to reference conveniently.
Thanks in advance for any comment such as (1) it's already available, (2) how to get
such things implemented by the Wiki developers, or (3) how to become a Wiki developer and
so be able to implement it yourself, (4) why its a terrible idea.
John2000