Cross References in the Manuals/Help Files

[Pavel Sanda]

On Fri, Jan 14, 2022 at 07:25:31AM +0200, Dr Eberhard Lisse wrote:
> I came across the reference in the UserGuide to Program Listings in the
> Embedded Objects Manual, due to a recent thread, and noticed that that
> reference is not a (Clickable) Cross Reference.
> 
> Would making all those references cross references be worth of a
> request-for feature?
> 
> I realize the effort involved, as all those documents will need to
> be(come) Child Documents, which might be a good idea anyway, because
> then the whole manual can be printed as one.
> 
> And while considering it, would it be a good idea to ensure all of this
> works as DocBook so it can become a Handbook on Kindle?

I would not recommend to crosslink manuals into single large creature due
to it's fragility, but to have merged manuals in a single output is good.
Unfortunately its implementation is harder than it seems on the first sight.
You can have a look on  lib/doc/MergedManuals.lyx.

For LaTeX output manuals do have very different preambles which clash, xhtml output
looks pretty bad on some places (and IIRC currently freezes on 2.4), for docbook
I haven't tried but suspect the same.

> Perhaps with a little embellishment one could even publish this on
> Amazon for a Euro or two and that way generate some funds for the
> project.

My idea was to publish merged manual on wiki.lyx.org so the google searches
for relevant queries directly leads you to manual, but as said xhtml output
needs more love then it currently gets...

Pavel