individual entries in Tidings do not provide a any hyperlinking ... by means of <a name> tags

You're right; I completely misunderstood you. Sorry.
That's a good idea. I'll see if I can make a patch to have name anchors added automatically.

it was "once" impossible to display in posting sections the number of direct replies

It has always been possible to display either "direct replies" or "total replies" but not both. Which one you see is controlled by a flag in your User Settings. What would be nice is to be able to see them both, and I thought that's what you were asking for. To do this would require a non-trivial amount of work.
The recent change merely added the word "direct" to the displayed text when showing the number of direct replies, so that you don't have to go to your User Settings to see what you set the flag to if you don't remember.

It would be nice if I had the technical expertise, the time, and hubris enough to hack that thing

Your heart is in the right place. :-)