[p5.js 2.0 Bug Report]: Broken links in lerpColor

[nbogie]

Most appropriate sub-area of p5.js?

• Accessibility
• Color
• Core/Environment/Rendering
• Data
• DOM
• Events
• Image
• IO
• Math
• Typography
• Utilities
• WebGL
• Build process
• Unit testing
• Internationalization
• Friendly errors
• Other (specify if possible)

p5.js version

2.2.1-rc.0

Web browser and version

chrome

Operating system

mac

Steps to reproduce this

Steps:

1. Visit https://beta.p5js.org/reference/p5/lerpcolor/
2. In the description, click on the links for lerp and colorMode().
3. Observe the "page not found" error.

This PR was already applied to fix this same issue in main branch for p5.js v1.x (so this only needs fixed for p5.js v2.x).

A small extra suggestion:
The text (but not the href) of these links could also be made consistent regarding the parentheses () at the end. e.g. lerp() and colorMode(). (Currently, one has () and one does not).

[nbogie]

(I'll leave this as it's a good first issue)

[rakesh2OO5]

I’ve opened PR #8518 to fix the broken reference links in the lerpColor() documentation for p5.js 2.0.

The fix updates the legacy hash-based links to use the canonical /reference/p5/* paths so they no longer lead to 404s. Please let me know if you’d like any changes or adjustments.

[nbogie]

Hi @rakesh2OO5! Some suggestions (though I'm not a maintainer):

"legacy hash-based links"

Hash-based links aren't legacy, as far as I know. Have a look at how all other pages do their links to other reference pages - they all use hash-based links!

Take a look at the diff of the pull request by M0nica, which I originally linked. It was used to solve this problem for p5 v1.x and I think it's still the correct solution for v2.x.

Any change to the code should try to solve problems in a way consistent with the rest of the codebase. (Why: it makes the system easier to understand and makes future system-wide changes easier to reason about and implement.)

You're encouraged to discuss potential solutions here or on discord, if you have doubts!

[aashu2006]

Hi @nbogie !
I looked at the v1.x PR that originally fixed this and compared it with the current v2 docs. It seems keeping hash-based links but correcting the targets might preserve consistency better than switching to /reference/p5/.
Happy to help refine the PR or open a follow-up if needed 🙂

[nbogie]

Hi @rakesh2OO5! By the way, do you know where you read that hash-based links are now "legacy" for the project? I would be interested to read that and either get it corrected or correct my understanding. Thanks!

[nbogie]

(Hi @aashu2006! That'll be up to the maintainers!)

[rakesh2OO5]

Thanks for flagging that — you’re right, that wording was inaccurate on my part.

After looking more closely at the existing docs and the v1.x implementation, I realized the hash-based #/p5/... links are still the intended and consistent approach. I’ve updated the PR to follow that pattern instead of switching link styles.

Appreciate the clarification and the reference to the earlier fix — it helped align this change with the rest of the codebase.