# \[\`foo\`\](@ref) to auto-link the Julia manual on discourse?

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/foo-ref-to-auto-link-the-julia-manual-on-discourse/107055>\
**Category:** Meta Discussion\
**Created:** [December 2, 2023, 7:24pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/foo-ref-to-auto-link-the-julia-manual-on-discourse/107055 "2023-12-02T19:24:07Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
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**Author:** ![mbauman](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/mbauman/32/31082_2.png) [@mbauman](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/mbauman)\
**Post date:** [December 6, 2023, 6:11pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/foo-ref-to-auto-link-the-julia-manual-on-discourse/107055/3 "2023-12-06T18:11:20Z")

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I don’t think this is possible. The tools in our toolbox here are pretty limited, and I think Documenter’s `@ref` needs something fairly advanced.

There are really only two tools we have:

- We have the [Auto linkify words](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/automatic-package-links/106275/4) theme component that simply adds a link underneath text that you wrote — like ModelingToolkit.jl — without needing to explicitly write out the `[](...)` markdown. But that doesn’t _change_ the text that appears, it just adds a link to it. You can use regexes there.

- We also have the builtin “Replace” functionality from [“Watched Words”](https://meta.discourse.org/t/watched-words-reference-guide/241735), which can actually replace text that’s written, but as our site is currently hosted it doesn’t even support regexes or matches. It’s just a straight-up plain-text find/replace.

But then there’s the bigger question about packages: How could I know how to link to [`CSV.read`](https://csv.juliadata.org/stable/reading.html#CSV.read) or [`Random.rand!`](https://docs.julialang.org/en/v1/stdlib/Random/#Random.rand!)? Perhaps there’s a missing Documenter.jl (and maybe DocumentationGenerator.jl) feature here: provide a URL endpoint like `example.com/base/path/to/docs/stable/api/Module.function` that will redirect to the place where that docstring lives.

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