linter-rules/local-refs-exists says to fix links mentioned, but no links mentioned

[gkellogg]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
I'm trying to find broken local references that the linter mentions but nothing reports on those references specifically missing.

Describe the solution you'd like
In local-refs-exist.js run(), it would be useful if a warning was shown for each offendingElement.

Additional context

Running locally:

 respec -s "http://localhost:8000/rdf-xml/spec/index.html?specStatus=WD" -o /dev/null --verbose -t 20 -e -w
[INFO] [Timeout: 20000ms] Processing resource: http://localhost:8000/rdf-xml/spec/index.html?specStatus=WD ...
[INFO] [Timeout: 19999ms] Launching browser
[INFO] [Timeout: 19272ms] Navigating to http://localhost:8000/rdf-xml/spec/index.html?specStatus=WD
[INFO] [Timeout: 18233ms] Navigation complete.
[INFO] [Timeout: 18167ms] Using ReSpec v32.7.0
[INFO] [Timeout: 18166ms] Processing ReSpec document...
[ERROR] undefined
[INFO] [Timeout: 16555ms] Processed document.
[WARNING] Broken local reference found in document.
   Count: 94
  Plugin: core/linter-rules/local-refs-exist
    Hint: Please fix the links mentioned.
[WARNING] W3C Recommendation track documents require a separate “Privacy Considerations” section.
  Plugin: w3c/linter-rules/required-sections
    Hint: Add a <section> with a “Privacy Considerations” header. See the [Horizontal review guidelines](https://www.w3.org/Guide/documentreview/#how_to_get_horizontal_review).
        If the document is not intended for the W3C Recommendation track, set [noRecTrack](https://respec.org/docs/#noRecTrack) to true
        or turn off the [required-sections](https://respec.org/docs/#required-sections) linter rule.
[WARNING] W3C Recommendation track documents require a separate “Security Considerations” section.
  Plugin: w3c/linter-rules/required-sections
    Hint: Add a <section> with a “Security Considerations” header. See the [Horizontal review guidelines](https://www.w3.org/Guide/documentreview/#how_to_get_horizontal_review).
        If the document is not intended for the W3C Recommendation track, set [noRecTrack](https://respec.org/docs/#noRecTrack) to true
        or turn off the [required-sections](https://respec.org/docs/#required-sections) linter rule.
[INFO] [Timeout: 15548ms] Done.
[FATAL] Error: Errors found during processing.
    at run (/opt/homebrew/lib/node_modules/respec/tools/respec2html.js:247:11)
    at process.processTicksAndRejections (node:internal/process/task_queues:95:5)

Describe any alternatives you've considered
I can get some results from https://validator.w3.org/checklink, but if ReSpec doesn't exit properly, it may fail. Couldn't find a reasonable and up-to-date local alternative.

Oddly, checklink reports no problems.

Can you or your organization fund the work or help with development?
Sadly, no.

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1. contribute to the project yourself via a pull request. We will guide you!
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I could do a PR, if this was generally thought worthwhile. Maybe I'm missing something.

[sidvishnoi]

That's something I tried to solve in https://github.com/w3c/respec/pull/3409, but it's a bit more complex that I had time for.

For now you'd have to rely on ReSpec UI in browser.

As an alternative to #3409, we can probably show:

• offending element's ID (but that can be noisy when ReSpec auto-generates random ones),
• or some matching selector (like section#some-id > a[href="some-link"]{some text}, but it's complicated to get a good short and meaningful selector),
• or fallback to innerHTML (which is good only for small content like links).

[sidvishnoi]

Oddly, checklink reports no problems.

That's something to investigate. There might be something that runs before linter that either breaks the linter or something that runs after linter that fixes those links.

[gkellogg]

So, the problem I'm having isn't because of bad links, but an odd issue that happens when you include a reference to SAX. Note the generated document https://gist.githack.com/gkellogg/0f8eb7f0f261da402683f42fa09f38ac/raw/3239ca348989318a91a6517d06e4c5e336dad8dc/sax-problem.html based on a one-line modification to the ReSpec basic.html example.

<p>Reference to [[SAX]].</p>

Even though SAX is in specref, it generates an error somewhere in ReSpec, which also reports as missing local anchors due to an expectation for a bibliographic reference for SAX, which isn't there. Remove [[SAX]] and the problem goes away.

"SAX": "D. Megginson, et al. <a href=\"http://www.megginson.com/downloads/SAX/\"><cite>SAX: The Simple API for XML</cite></a>. May 1998. URL: <a href=\"http://www.megginson.com/downloads/SAX/\"> http://www.megginson.com/downloads/SAX/</a>",