> Is this a problem in our markup or a bug in intersphinx?

It's a markup problem -- those types are documented as functions, using the :func: role/`.. func::` directive.

It's not only a markup mismatch but, strictly speaking, it's *wrong* documentation: str, int, ... aren't functions, they're *classes* and should be documented as such. It's a bit odd to search for information on the str *class* in the list of built-in *functions*.


> If this work within one documentation set (as I believe it does)

It does not. For example, in http://docs.python.org/library/functions.html#max there's a reference to list.sort using :meth:`list.sort` but no link could be generated. How could it possibly work without decent documentation about the list data type?