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Docs fail with Documenter 1.18 on plain API @ref links #508

Description

@ChrisRackauckas-Claude

Reproduction

On a clean checkout of upstream/main:

$ julia --project=docs -e 'using Pkg; Pkg.instantiate()'
# resolved Documenter v1.18.0 and DataInterpolations v9.5.0

$ julia --project=docs docs/make.jl
...
┌ Error: no doc found for reference '[HeatPort](@ref)'
┌ Error: no doc found for reference '[OnePort](@ref)'
┌ Error: no doc found for reference '[Flange](@ref)'
ERROR: LoadError: `makedocs` encountered an error

The same run completes the doctests before failing cross-reference validation. This reproduces without the DataInterpolations v10 compatibility change in #507.

Environment:

Julia Version 1.12.4
OS: Linux (x86_64-linux-gnu)
Documenter v1.18.0

Cause

Documenter 1.18 tightened @ref classification: plain link text is now treated as a header reference, while docstring references must use backticked link text. The package has many docstring references in the old form, for example [HeatPort](@ref), [OnePort](@ref), and [Flange](@ref).

Release note: https://github.com/JuliaDocs/Documenter.jl/blob/v1.18.0/CHANGELOG.md#version-v1180---2026-08-28

The docs compat permits all Documenter 1.x releases, so the failure appeared when v1.18.0 was released rather than through a repository commit.

Proposed fix

Convert only API/docstring references to the backticked form (for example, [`HeatPort`](@ref)) and leave intended header references plain. This should be a separate docs fix; the DataInterpolations PR should remain a focused compatibility change.

Activity

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