This is a follow-up to my last question.
I have updated the repository at https://github.com/pgundlach/hugoexample/
There are two changes: the first is that I now have _index.md as the index page and a new shortcode linkto:
({{ with .Site.GetPage "section" ( .Get 0 ) }}{{ .URL }}{{ end}})
because ref cannot link to _index.md, right?
But still I can’t get any link to the index page. I’d like to get offline support (no server) with .html URLs
ref cannot currently get home page, sections etc., but I consider them as static (i.e. they don’t move around, and if they did move around I would have to change the refs as well) so I have never found a use for that.
You should use Permalink or Relpermalink, not URL.
As to offline support I suggest looking at relativeURLs=true.
Hello @bep,
I have problems following the suggestions you have made: none of these give me a link to the home page index.html.
({{ with .Site.GetPage "section" "index.md" }}{{ .Relpermalink }}{{ end}})
({{ with .Site.GetPage "section" "index.md" }}{{ .Permalink }}{{ end}})
({{ with .Site.GetPage "section" "_index.md" }}{{ .Relpermalink }}{{ end}})
({{ with .Site.GetPage "section" "_index.md" }}{{ .Permalink }}{{ end}})
({{ with .Site.GetPage "section" "/_index.md" }}{{ .Relpermalink }}{{ end}})
({{ with .Site.GetPage "section" "/_index.md" }}{{ .Permalink }}{{ end}})
({{ with .Site.GetPage "section" "/" }}{{ .Relpermalink }}{{ end}})
({{ with .Site.GetPage "section" "/" }}{{ .Permalink }}{{ end}})
({{ with .Site.GetPage "section" "index.html" }}{{ .Relpermalink }}{{ end}})
({{ with .Site.GetPage "section" "index.html" }}{{ .Permalink }}{{ end}})
And your other suggestion to use relativeURLs=true: this is what I have in my config anyway.
The source (updated) is here:
None of your examples look similar to my suggestion.
@bep, obviously I don’t understand, and I have problems understanding what I am doing wrong. I’d appreciate any pointer to the right direction.
I understood your answer to replace URL by Relpermalink or Permalink. And to try relativeURLs=true. The last thing is in my config, the first one is what I have tried, but obviously something is wrong with my approach. Can anybody help me on that?
@frischefarbe this feature is broken in the current release, dude. You’re out of luck. it worked before, but somehow this is broken.
–mm
@markmiller Which version have you used?
I have now tried the following:
# when I include the line, all my links contain example.com
#baseURL = "http://example.com"
languageCode = "en-us"
title = "foo"
theme = "mytheme"
canonifyURLs = false
uglyURLs = true
relativeURLs = true
(including other combination of true/false in all values and setting the baseURL)
and
.Page: {{ .Page }}<br>
.Page.File: {{ .Page.File }} <br>
.Page.Kind: {{ .Page.Kind }}<br>
.Page.Next: {{ .Page.Next }}<br>
.Page.Permalink: {{ .Page.Permalink }}<br>
.Page.RelPermalink: {{ .Page.RelPermalink }}<br>
.Page.CurrentSection: {{ .Page.CurrentSection }}<br>
.Page.Parent: {{ .Page.Parent }}<br>
.Page.Sections: {{ .Page.Sections }}<br>
.Page.Section: {{ .Page.Section }}<br>
and this is the result (index.html in the public folder):
from _index.md
.Page: Page("my title")
.Page.File: {_index.md _index.md _index <nil> md 3976528693a0108357f4928017600865 _index en}
.Page.Kind: home
.Page.Next: <nil>
.Page.Permalink: /
.Page.RelPermalink: /
.Page.CurrentSection: Page("my title")
.Page.Parent: <nil>
.Page.Sections: Pages(0)
.Page.Section:
So I assume that you are right. But I still like to know if there is any way to get a correct link to “index.html”. The .RelPermalink is broken when it comes to non-served files.
How about adding index.html when the value is /? 
@maiki This would of course work, but that is a workaround, not a real solution. IMO the idea to link to the start page is not so off, that others might participate in having a proper solution.
Having a PermaLink of “/” or a RelPermalink of “/” is just wrong (in this setting). So either it is a bug in Hugo (which I slightly doubt) or it is an incorrect setting on my side (site). But I have no idea which setting this could be, as I have tried a lot of differnt things here.
We build static pages from templates and text files; every workaround is a solution.
Good luck! 
You have plenty of typos in your examples which gives ERROR in the log and, not surprisingly, wrong result.
See:
Hello @bep, thank you for the patch, but it doesn’t solve my problem with the linking:
I try to state my goal: I have lots of pages that serve as a documentation for software product. I want to ship the HTML pages with the software as “static files” which can be viewed without a webserver, just a browser. Therefore the href="…" URLs must not start with a “/” nor with “http”. They must contain relative links for that. An example is at https://speedata.github.io/publisher/manual/index.html.
The normal relative links can be easily achieved with the <relref "...md"> shortcode. But the <relref ...> doesn’t seem to work for _index.md (as you have written). I have tried your code on Github with .RelPermalink, but this always starts with a slash.
{{ with .Site.GetPage "home" }}{{ .RelPermalink }}{{ end}}
should give something like
../index.html
or whatever, but instead it gives me
/
which is a page that does not exists.
I know that I am bothering people (esp. you) here by keeping insinsting on finding a solution, I really apologize. Since I know that Hugo is really full of features and great, I still doubt that this is a limitation of Hugo but a misunderstanding on my side.
Patrick
You need to
relativeURLS=trueRelPermalink etc)No, it shouldn’t. You don’t understand how the relativeURLS=true feature works – it translates links (a href etc.), so you cannot look at RelPermalink in isolation.
But I would say that this currently is a “expert feature”. Maybe we can make this simpler in the future.
Hello @bep,
I think we have a complete misunderstanding of each other. I do have relativeURLs=true and use RelPermalink, but still I can’t achive my goal. My test is realistic in the sense that this is exactly the problems I want to solve, but it seems not to be possible with Hugo at the moment.
I understand that Hugo’s relative links are not the same as I need them to be (except for relref), so I think I need to stick with a workaround. Which is ok, I just wanted to make sure that there is no Hugo solution available.
Thanks for your help anyway!
Patrick
OK, I see it now. The RelPermalink to the home page Isn’t “ugly” – which I guess is by design. We could change that in the relativeURLs=true case, but you need to create a GitHub issue.
But note that the value of RelPermalink would then be /index.html and not ../index.html or whatever. And you can also easily append the “index.html” suffix to the URL yourself, as home page is a special case. The other sections should be ugly.
@frischefarbe Have you created an issue? I have the similar case with the learn theme, (described here: The theme generates wrong URLs in menu when relativeURLs = true · Issue #91 · matcornic/hugo-theme-learn · GitHub), so I can create a new issue, if not done already.
I have not created an issue. (Sorry for the late answer)
Ok, I’ve just created the issue: https://github.com/gohugoio/hugo/issues/4642