Signposting in Documents

Signposts make complex documents more flexible and easier to read; signposts exist in many forms, but are familiar as cross references and as hypertext links. Signposting systems need to be carefully designed, so that they are reliable, easy to use for readers yet convenient for authors to embed in their writing. There are fundamental problems in achieving good signposting, which this paper explores through cross-referencing in the popular medium of LaTeX, which is often the typesetting system of choice for heavily cross-referenced documents. This paper provides an implementation of cross references for LaTeX users. Problems with LaTeX and TeX arise, and are explored and mostly solved: some problems are due to the designs of these systems, but, crucially, some problems are unavoidable, an inevitable part of signposting in principle, whatever systems are used, even including the web.