@Section @Title { "@LinkSource", "@LinkDest", and "@URLLink" } @Tag { link_source } @Begin @PP The two symbols @@LinkSource and @@LinkDest link.source.sym @Index { @@LinkSource symbol } link.dest.sym @Index { @@LinkDest symbol } work together to create @I { cross links } in a document, that is, points where a user viewing the document on screen can click and be transported to another point in the document. We call the point where the user clicks the @I source of the link, and the point where the user arrives the @I destination of the link. @PP To create a source point, place @ID { @I tag @Code "@LinkSource" @I object } at some point in the document, where the value of @I tag is a legal cross reference tag, and @I object is an arbitrary Lout object. The result of this is just {@I object}, but if the user of a screen viewer clicks on any point within the rectangular bounding box of that object, a link will be entered. @PP To create a destination point, place @ID { @I tag @Code "@LinkDest" @I object } at some point in the document. Again, @I tag must evaluate to a legal cross reference tag, and @I object may be any Lout object. All @Code "@LinkSource" symbols whose tag is equal to this one are linked to this destination point. @PP For every source point there must be exactly one destination point with the same tag, otherwise it will not be clear where the link is supposed to take the user. Lout will print a warning if this condition is violated anywhere; it will refuse to insert a destination point with the same name as a previous one, but it is not able to refrain from inserting a source point with no corresponding destination point, and such points must cause errors of some kind when viewed (exactly what error will depend on the viewer). @PP The @@URLLink symbol is similar to @@LinkSource in being the source point of a link, but instead of a tag you supply a URL to some other document altogether: @ID @Code { "\"http://snark.ptc.spbu.ru/~uwe/lout/lout.html\" @URLLink { Lout Home Page }" } The URL will need to be enclosed in quotes, because of the "/" characters which are otherwise taken to be concatenation operations. As for @@LinkSource, the result is just the object to the right, like this: @ID { "http://snark.ptc.spbu.ru/~uwe/lout/lout.html" @URLLink { Lout Home Page } } but if the user clicks on this object on the screen they enter a link that takes them to the given URL location, assuming that the software which they are using to display the document is clever enough to do this. @PP At present, @I object above is treated as though it were enclosed in @@OneCol, which means that a long link source or destination point will not break over two lines as part of an enclosing paragraph. This deficiency might be corrected in the future. @End @Section