Having identical titles leads to identical ids and anchors

Feature
,
1

Hi,

I discovered a bug (?) or technical limitation. the links of the TOC as well as the highlighting when scrolling down don’t work properly if the headings have the same name. i guess it is because not a unique ID is generated but the ID is only the heading’s name.

in my case the TOC looks like this - coming from an educational background the structure is always the same for our learning units, e.g.

  • H1 - Overview
  • H1 - 0:00 > 0:15 - Plenary and Introduction
    • H2 - Aim
    • H2 - Content
    • H2 - Method
    • H2 - Hints
    • H2 - Slides
  • H1 - 0:15 > 0:45 - Groupwork
    • H2 - Aim
    • H2 - Content
    • H2 - Method
    • H2 - Hints
    • H2 - Slides
  • H1 - 0:45 > 0:60 - Individual Work
    • H2 - Aim
    • H2 - Content
    • H2 - Method
    • H2 - Hints
    • H2 - Slides
  • H1 - 0:60 > 0:90 - Plenary Discussion
    • H2 - Aim
    • H2 - Content
    • H2 - Method
    • H2 - Hints
    • H2 - Slides

I guess we could make the H2-Titles more rich by giving more information, but this runs counter to having a clear structure across all learning units - and especially in the case of “hints” and “slides” there is not so much more that we could write.

Maybe this whole issue is related to the above mentioned issue … but i am not an expert enough.

6 Likes
2

It’s not a bug as it is inherent to HTML itself, so it’s a technical limitation.

A video of this behavior using the theme component as you explain:

I think it’s quite low priority, but a change could be welcome, so I’ll add a pr-welcome tag on it if someone wants to give it a shot. :slight_smile:

1 Like
3

Hmm no, the anchors are getting unique name attributes

# Heading level A
foo

## Heading level B
bar

## Heading level B
bar

# Heading level A
foo

## Heading level B
bar

## Heading level B
bar

generates: (note the -1 -2 -3 etc)

<h1 dir="ltr">
  <a name="heading-level-a-1" class="anchor" href="#heading-level-a-1"></a>Heading level A
</h1>
<p dir="ltr">foo</p>
<h2 dir="ltr">
  <a name="heading-level-b-2" class="anchor" href="#heading-level-b-2"></a>Heading level B
</h2>
<p dir="ltr">bar</p>
<h2 dir="ltr">
  <a name="heading-level-b-3" class="anchor" href="#heading-level-b-3"></a>Heading level B
</h2>
<p dir="ltr">bar</p>
<h1 dir="ltr">
  <a name="heading-level-a-4" class="anchor" href="#heading-level-a-4"></a>Heading level A
</h1>
<p dir="ltr">foo</p>
<h2 dir="ltr">
  <a name="heading-level-b-5" class="anchor" href="#heading-level-b-5"></a>Heading level B
</h2>
<p dir="ltr">bar</p>
<h2 dir="ltr">
  <a name="heading-level-b-6" class="anchor" href="#heading-level-b-6"></a>Heading level B
</h2>
<p dir="ltr">bar</p>
4

The attributes’ values are based on the titles’ contents, so identical titles will have identical id and data-d-toc attributes:

Last “Aim” title:

image
image1247×1359 96.1 KB

Leads to the first Aim which has an id and data-d-toc attributes whose value is the same as the last ToC element:

image
image1247×1359 117 KB

1 Like
5

Exactly, so this is not an inherent limitation of HTML (actually, having identical id’s in a single document is a violation of the spec) but a bug in the theme component.

I guess this

const suffix = slugify(h.textContent) || index;
const id = h.getAttribute("id") || slugify(`toc-${h.nodeName}-${suffix}`);

needs to be something like

const suffix = slugify(h.textContent) || '';
const id = h.getAttribute("id") || slugify(`toc-${h.nodeName}-${suffix}-${index}`);
6 Likes