Change the name of the file and link to Inline::C_Cookbook and everything should work just fine.

Do you know how http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?Inline::C knows that http://search.cpan.org/~sisyphus/Inline-0.45/C/C.pod is the correct file? And when you click on source you go to http://search.cpan.org/src/SISYPHUS/Inline-0.45/C/C.pm? It parses package Inline::C; and parses

=head1 NAME

Inline::C - Write Perl Subroutines in C

=head1 DESCRIPTION
[download]

L<Inline::C-Cookbook> might have better chance linking to http://search.cpan.org/~sisyphus/Inline-0.45/C/C-Cookbook.pod if name was

=head1 NAME

Inline::C-Cookbook - A Cornucopia of Inline C Recipes

=cut
[download]

I'm not sure if its ever explicitly stated in any docs, but the NAME part before  - is used for linking.

I'm not sure if its ever explicitly stated in any docs, but the NAME part before - is used for linking

I was unaware of any of that. I think I can see what you're getting at. I'm a little puzzled as to how that "Inline::C-Cookbook" in the "NAME" is going to convey the information that the file is actually in the "C" directory (rather than the top-level directory ... or even the non-existent "C-Cookbook" directory).

I'll give it a go, next release.

Cheers,
Rob

The - in your URL can't be a valid Perl module name

Yet, in Inline.pod, we find that L<Inline-FAQ> is correctly rendered as http://search.cpan.org/~sisyphus/Inline-0.45/Inline-FAQ.pod

Cheers,
Rob

Fascinating. I'm sure this is a bug.

If you look in, say, Rose::DB you'll see that they use 2 different kinds of links. The first is for ones in the uploaded distribution. The second is for ones which are in some other distribution. In that distribution it gets them right. The problem is that you are getting the "not my distribution" type of link for Inline::C-Cookbook, and it isn't working. Your good links are of the direct kind. I don't see an option for having 2 kinds of links in Pod::Html, so they are probably using some kind of custom parser (possibly derived from that one).

(Possibly related is that in perl 5.8 if I type in pod2html Inline.pod > foo.html I see 5 warnings about being unable to resolve links. It is unable to resolve Inline-Support (2x), Inline-API (2x) and Inline-FAQ (1x). It does think it can resolve Inline::C-Cookbook. The difference is in the function page_sect in Pod::Html. It has conditional logic with a branch for /::/ that has different logic than the final else. If they hacked up that to get theirs, then this might be related. Or could just be coincidence.)

So at this point I am confident that this is a bug. http://search.cpan.org/feedback has advice for how to give feedback. I'd use that to report the bug. In the meantime my original suggestion for renaming the file probably will succeed in working around their bug.