Lack of html anchor for =item * foo

I discovered that in html output of lists that have elements of the form
=item * foo
no <a> anchor is generated for foo; this is different from lists of the form
=item foo

The first case generates a <ul> list, and the second a <dl> list.
The problem is that in the first form, any link in the file to 'foo' is 
broken, since there is no anchor for it.

Is this deliberate?  Should it be changed?