Is there an HTML version of the ECMA-335 CLI Specification?

Question

I'm currently writing a blog post about the internals of the CLI, and I try to cite where something gets said. Mainly in the Partition III docs.

I'm currently linking to the ECMA page for it, where there are a bunch of pdf- and zip-files, and making section references where they are needed; but I would really like to link directly to the sections in the text.

Does anyone know where I can find an HTML version of the specification? I've been all over MSDN, Mono and Google looking, but have thus-far come up empty.

Answer 1

The closest I know of is this list of MSIL instructions.

Answer 2

Edit: as pointed out in the comments, this is actually an older draft, I'm not sure if it is "close enough" for you to use, but I'm not having any luck finding the current version in HTML.

It's not going to be a pretty link, but this will probably do the job (Google's HTML version of a DOC file):

http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:OkolnRjRgFIJ:download.microsoft.com/download/D/C/1/DC1B219F-3B11-4A05-9DA3-2D0F98B20917/Partition%2520I%2520Architecture.doc

You can link to specific sections by viewing the source and looking for <a name="____"> anchors at the section, they all seem to have it, for example:

http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:OkolnRjRgFIJ:download.microsoft.com/download/D/C/1/DC1B219F-3B11-4A05-9DA3-2D0F98B20917/Partition%2520I%2520Architecture.doc#_Toc100635553

Of course, you could always just save this HTML file to a server under your own control, if you don't want to have such a messy-looking link.

Answer 3

Worse comes to worse, you could translate it yourself with pdftohtml (more on Google)

Answer 4

This document would imply that you can link into pdf files. I can do it by page (example http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/files/ECMA-ST/Ecma-335.pdf#page=53) which may be sufficient for your needs. Note that the page linked to is the numerical ordering in the file not the 'page numbers' at the bottom of the pages.

Using Named Destinations (see the linked pdf at the bottom) would be nicer but you need a program which will tell you what named destinations exist in the ECMA pdfs. Adobe Reader doesn't appear to do that so I can't check a particular section sorry (obvious attempts with the section names failed). Also note that in urls you are limited to only 32 characters for the name part.

Even if you are limited to page numbers only this is likely to be more pleasant than linking into word documents.