Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!decwrl!labrea!agate!garnet.berkeley.edu!carvalho
From: carvalho@garnet.berkeley.edu (Marcio de Carvalho)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: symbolic references in [nt]roff
Message-ID: <7044@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 18 Feb 88 22:44:52 GMT
References: <63@lzaz.ATT.COM>
Sender: usenet@agate.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: carvalho@garnet.berkeley.edu.UUCP (Marcio de Carvalho)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 16

In article <63@lzaz.ATT.COM> hutch@lzaz.ATT.COM (R.HUTCHISON) writes:
>When writing a document, I want to be able to symbolically reference
>some point in my (or someone else's) document.  FOr example, in my
>document, I want to say...
>
>	... for more information, refer to page XX (section 1.2.3)
>	    of this manual.
>

Have a look at the following reference:

A. Aho and R. Sethi, "Maintaining Cross References in Manuscripts," Software-
   Practice and Experience, 18, pp 1-13, 1988.

They show how to use UNIX tools (grep awk and sed) to maintain cross references.
One of their examples is exactly what you want.