Template:Anchor/doc

Latest revision as of 00:46, 21 October 2011

The template {{anchor/doc}} inserts one or more HTML anchors in a page. Those locations can then be linked to using [[#link|...]] syntax.

[edit] Examples

1. {{anchor/doc|foo}}

could be linked to with [[#foo|...]] from within the same article,

or it could be linked to with [[articlename#foo|...]] from other articles and from redirects.

2. Anchors can be more suitable for inter-article linking than section titles are. For example,

== <code style="color:green;">{{anchor/doc|foo}} Section title ==</code>

Here, links via [[articlename#foo]] would remain valid even if the section were renamed.

3. The template can be used to create up to ten anchors with a single call. For example,

{{anchor/doc|foo|bar|baz}}

will create three anchors that can then be linked to with [[#foo]], [[#bar]] and [[#baz]].

Specifying more than 10 anchors will cause an error message to be displayed.

[edit] Limitations

• Anchor names that contain # (hash), | (pipe), = (equal) will not work as expected. However, the latter can be worked around with {{=}}; a redirect with "=" in its name will link properly to an anchor with {{=}}. Markup code such as  and  (superscript and subscript) cannot be used. Most other characters, including white space and punctuation, are not a problem.
• The template can create a maximum of 10 anchors. Specifying more than 10 anchors will result in an error message.
• Putting each anchor name on separate lines, for example

{{anchor/doc

|humpty
|dumpty}}

will probably not work as expected.

• Anchor names should be unique on a page, and should not duplicate any heading titles. Duplicate anchors won't work as expected since the #links go to the first anchor with that name. Duplicate anchors also result in invalid HTML, so you can check for duplicate anchors by consulting the W3C Markup Validation Service.
• If the template is added to a section title then the code will appear in the edit summary when that section is edited, as in "/* {{anchor|Issues}}Limitations */ New issue". This can be fixed by deleting the template code from the edit summary before the changes are saved.