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Comment by abbot2 | Hacker News Reader

"As show on pages 105-107" looks much better than "As shown in sections 4.5.4, 5.1 and 5.1.2". Really. You don't have the first option with HTML and/or sphinx. Oh, and can I have some bold italic text please?

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Actually, I despise page number references because often popular resources get republished (because no one has the book from the 70s anymore), changing the page numbers, whereas a section title / number is much likelier to remain correct, and an URL to a paragraph can always be updated.

You can link to a section with a URL. No "section xyz" or "page n" needed.

Yes, you can place a link. But the link, unlike the page range, points only to the place, not to the scope.

Why can't you link to divs on a page? When I'm given a page range, I don't typically first go to some arbitrary page in the middle of a range.

But the rules of citation prescribe that you give a section or page number. Giving a URL is a neat technical solution, but it's not a proper citation.

You can cite a URL.

You can if you must but you know what I mean. Typically you cite a peer reviewed work and reference it in the bibliography with author, year, publisher, etc.

reference it in the bibliography with author, year, publisher

Which is more than a little quaint, in 2012.

Not really. These are useful bits of bibliographic information, which can give you an idea of a source without having to consult it. And the kind of publisher gives an indication of reliability ranging from peer reviewed to self-published. Including an URL as well, when applicable, is of course very useful (given that it's a stable one).

Sure, but that's what the PDF format exists for.

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