Anchors¶

Preprocessor which allows to use arbitrary anchors in Foliant documents.

Installation¶

$ pip install foliantcontrib.anchors

Config¶

To enable the preprocessor, add anchors to preprocessors section in the project config:

preprocessors:
    - anchors

The preprocessor has some options, but most probably you won't need any of them:

preprocessors:
    - anchors:
        element: '<span id="{anchor}"></span>'
        tex: False
        anchors: True
        custom_ids: False

element: Template of an HTML-element which will be placed instead of the <anchor> tag. In this template {anchor} will be replaced with the tag contents. Ignored when tex is True. Default: '<span id="{anchor}"></span>'
tex: If this option is True, preprocessor will try to use TeX-language anchors: \hypertarget{anchor}{}. Default: False

Notice, this option will work only with pdf target. For all other targets it is set to False.

anchors: If this options is True, anchors tag will be processed. Turn off if you only want to process custom IDs. Default: True
custom_ids: Since version 1.0.5 preprocessor Anchors can also process Pandoc-style custom IDs. Set this option to True to do that. Default: False.

Usage¶

anchors

Just add an anchor tag to some place and then use an ordinary Markdown-link to this anchor:

...

<anchor>limitation</anchor>
Some important notice about system limitation.

...

Don't forget about [limitation](https://github.com/foliant-docs/foliantcontrib.anchors/-/blob/master/#limitation)!

You can also place anchors in the middle of paragraph:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit.<anchor>middle</anchor> Molestiae illum iusto, sequi magnam consequatur porro iste facere at fugiat est corrupti dolorum quidem sapiente pariatur rem, alias unde! Iste, aliquam.

[Go to the middle of the paragraph](https://github.com/foliant-docs/foliantcontrib.anchors/-/blob/master/#middle)

You can place anchors inside tables:

Name | Age | Weight
---- | --- | ------
Max  | 17  | 60
Jane | 98  | 12
John | 10  | 40
Katy | 54  | 54
Mike <anchor>Mike</anchor>| 22  | 299
Cinty| 25  | 42

...

Something's wrong with Mike, [look](https://github.com/foliant-docs/foliantcontrib.anchors/-/blob/master/#Mike)!

custom IDs

Since version 1.0.5 preprocessor Anchors can also process Pandoc-style custom heading identifiers (previously you had to use CustomIDs preprocessor for that purpose). To use this function, turn on the custom_ids option in your foliant.yml:

preprocessors:
    anchors:
        ...
        custom_ids: True

Then add custom identifiers to your headings:

# My heading {#foo}

Lorem ipsum, dolor sit amet consectetur adipisicing elit. Omnis non vitae placeat sapiente reprehenderit officia.

After processing your text will be look like this:

<span id="custom_id"></span>

# My heading

Lorem ipsum, dolor sit amet consectetur adipisicing elit. Omnis non vitae placeat sapiente reprehenderit officia.

Additional info¶

1. Anchors are case sensitive

Markdown and MarkDown are two different anchors.

2. Anchors should be unique

You can't use two anchors with the same name in one document.

If preprocessor notices repeating anchors in one md-file it will throw you a warning. If you are building a flat document (e.g. PDF or docx with Pandoc), you will receive the warning even if anchor repeats in different md-files.

3. Anchors may conflict with headers

Headers are usually assigned anchors of their own. Be careful, your anchors may conflict with them.

Preprocessor will try to detect if you are using anchor which is already taken by the header and warn you in console.

4. Some symbols are restricted

You can't use these symbols in anchors:

[]<>\"

Also you can't use space.

5. But a lot of other symbols are available

All these are valid anchors:

<anchor>!important!</anchor>
<anchor>_anchor_</anchor>
<anchor>section(1)</anchor>
<anchor>section/1/</anchor>
<anchor>anchor$1$</anchor>
<anchor>about:info</anchor>
<anchor>test'1';</anchor>
<anchor>якорь</anchor>
<anchor>👀</anchor>

Notice for Mkdocs¶

In many Mkdocs themes the top menu lays over the text with absolute position. In this situation all anchors will be hidden by the menu.

Possible solution is to change the element option for your anchors to have a vertical offset. Example config:

preprocessors:
    - anchors:
        element: '<span style="display:block; margin:-3.1rem; padding:3.1rem;" id="{anchor}"></span>'

Or, even better, you can assign your anchor a class in element and add these rules to your custom mkdocs styles.