The Highway Code is:
the official road user guide for Great Britain (says Wikipedia)
Drivers must study it in order to pass a driving test, and all road users should remain familiar with it — including any revisions — throughout their lives.
It’s available online, but large parts only as a series of large PDF files. That means that when, for example, my friend Pete Ashton asks:
It’s still illegal to park on double yellow lines, right? on Twitter
I can’t easily answer him by linking directly to the section of the Road Markings PDF which says:
Double yellow lines mean no waiting at any time, unless there are signs that specifically indicate seasonal restrictions.
I would like the Highway Code to be fully available as a series of plain old semantic HTML web pages, with each section within each page having a unique ID (which even the parts already in HTML currently lack), so that I can link to the relevant, specific, section when I want to refer to it. For example, the section quoted above might be at http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/TravelAndTransport/Highwaycode/markings#double-yellow
Dear Government, Can you do that, please?
Update: I’ve asked my MP, Khalid Mahmood, to do what he can to assist with this request. I’ll let you know what happens.
Andy, it’s available as HTML from the link you give, although it lacks fragment ids.
In 2003, I linked to what was then Rule 92 at http://www.highwaycode.gov.uk/07.shtml#92
In the past then, not only was the Highway Code under its own URL, it had precisely what you were asking for. The markup now looks machine generated – should be straightforward to add the appropriate anchors and ids.
@Jez – parts are; but sections like that on road markings are only in PDFs. I’ll clarify that, above.
In the case of Pete’s request, you could append:
#page=[page number]
…to the PDF url to force the document to open at a specific page. I know it’s not semantically correct but it does help users.
Agree HTML with the named anchors is the ideal though.
Agree