> "Anthony Williams" <anth...@nortelnetworks.com> wrote in message

> > > > "Heiko Oberdiek" <oberd...@uni-freiburg.de> wrote in message
> > > > news:9rm8bv$83k$2@n.ruf.uni-freiburg.de...
> > > > > There is no place where a counter is "refstepcounted".
> > > > > So \label points to the beginning of the document,
> > > > > where hyperref had set an anchor.

> > > > > Put an \phantomsection in front of the \label command:

> > > > > \mainmatter
> > > > > \phantomsection
> > > > > \label{bookstart}
> > > > > % the last two commands should be on the same page

> Please don't misunderstand me, because I am very grateful for all the
> work that is going into those tools and for the prompt help I receive
> in this newsgroup. However someone should stand up and point out the
> following:

> All this stuff is just gobbledygook to an *author* (as opposed to a
> latex programmer)!

> Latex by itself is already a festival of special cases. It would be
> desirable to curb this tendency instead of adding to it. As an author
> I understand the commands for placing an anchor, namely \label{}, and
> for referring to it, namely \ref{} and \pageref{}, and it would be
> nice if I could stick to that instead of having to understand the
> insides of the processor to ensure that these simple commands do what
> is reasonable to expect that they might do.

> Since I happen to be a computer person I am in fact interested in
> understanding the insides, but if this becomes a precondition for
> making things work then I believe that it will always be hard for
> Latex to spread outside the hacker community. Even people who might
> otherwise value its qualities over a wysiwyg system would be put off
> by these arcane inconsistencies.

> > > > Why doesn't hyperref do this automatically? If I have multiple
labels in
> >  a
> > > > section, I want the pageref hyperlinks to take me to the correct
pages
> >  for
> > > > their location, not for the section anchor, just as the page number
> >  given is
> > > > that of the label, not that of the section start.

> Indeed so.

> > > The LaTeX system is designed for _two_ kinds of informations:
> > > (a) current active counter number (section, equation, ...)
> > > (b) page number

> > > But hyperref has to add a third information:
> > > (c) link anchor

> > > Without redesigning LaTeX this is not possible for all cases.

> One possible logical design would appear to be an anchor object, that
> one could place anywhere in a document, and
> methods/properties/call-them-what-you-like for it that would give you
> its page number, its section number, its equation and so on. Then you
> would be able to have a label inside a figure and say "figure 2.5 in
> section 2.3.8 on page 47", which I don't think you can now (if I
> understand correctly, the figure number masks out the section number).
> But ok, I'll take your word for it that this can't be done without a
> major redesign.

> > > So hyperref tries a compromise:
> > > * In most cases (a) and (b) are unchanged.
> > > * Sometimes (a) is overwritten. For example, if a
> > >    label is set after a section, and a footnote occurs
> > >    between, then (a) shows the footnote counter, not
> > >    the section counter.

> This I would rank as a bug (this was mentioned in another thread),
> because the footnote counter "spills out" of the footnote.

> > > * The anchor points to the last place, where the
> > >    counter for (a) is changed:
> > >      \section{foo}
> > >      ...
> > >      \label{bar}
> > >    Then a link \ref{bar} will jump to the beginning of
> > >    the section, not to the place of the \label command.
> > >    The user will more confused, if clicks on
> > >    "see section 2.1" and he will be guided somewhere
> > >    after or even some pages after.

> This is IMHO a bad design decision---a classical case of trying to
> outguess/outsmart the user and author. If I (author) put an anchor
> somewhere, I damn well expect the link to take me just there! If I
> really wanted to take the reader to the beginning of the section, I
> would explicitly place the anchor at the beginning of the section (or,
> in the ideal system discussed above, I'd say, in the appropriate
> computerese syntax, "beginning of section of anchor xxx").

> If I have a section that's 15 pages long and does not have any
> subsections (that's not my style of writing, but it's just for the
> sake of the example), and I want to refer to a topic discussed down
> there somewhere, I want to be able to say "as discussed in (or: near
> the end of) section 5.4", with the link taking me to the right place,
> and not at the beginning of the section. Otherwise what's the point of
> being able to put the anchor next to the material to which it refers?

> > likewise, if I see "see page 23" I expect the hyperlink to go to page
23,
> > not several pages earlier, where the section started.

> Exactly (though in this case that's already what happens, thankfully).

> > > * It is easy to overwrite the current hyperref behaviour
> > >    (for example with the help of \phantomsection. But not
> > >    vice versa.

> > The user has to remember to use \phantomsection, which is more typing.
For
> > vice-versa, why not just move the label? Or define a \sectionref{}
command?

> > It seems to me that the obvious place for the link anchor is the actual
> > location of the \label, anything else is counterintuitive.

> Yes yes yes.