I filed a query in the Dokuwiki forum and a reply suggested I file a feature request. The thread is
http://forum.dokuwiki.org/post/10735:
"In the version Dokuwiki we're currently using external links into the wiki are broken when a headline name is reused since conflicting names are disambiguated by appending a sequential number starting at the top. E.g. in
http://nemo.***.com/do/product:relnotes#item9, #item9 will become #item10 if someone inserts a new headline "Item" above it in the document. Are there any best practices or plugins that will solve this issue? I was figuring the enclosing headlines would factor into the named anchor, but alas. This Explicit ID feature of TracWiki would do it -
http://code.zikula.org/dokuwiki/wiki/WikiFormatting#Headings - but that's no help here."
So for example, the syntax requested would be:
[[product:relnotes]]
===== Release 21 phase 5 =====
=== Item ===
Some text...
===== Release 21 phase 4 =====
=== Item === #rel21p4item
Some different text...
So the section "Item" under "Release 21 Phase 4" could be forever referred to as
http://nemo.***.com/do/product:relnotes#rel21p4item rather than have the named anchor change each time the sub-heading "Item" is re-used.