Re: allowing "+" in .html file names

[Ben Pfaff]

Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> writes:

> On 28 Apr 2002, Ben Pfaff wrote:
> 
> > GNU libavl's manual has some anchor names that differ just in one
> > character, "-" in one of them, "+" in the other.  For the purpose
> > of converting these to HTML with makeinfo, it would be nice if
> > "+" were considered acceptable in .html file names.  RFC 2396
> > says that "+" is okay in URI path components and I don't know of
> > any mainstream OSes that disallow it in file names.
> 
> Makeinfo allows only the portable characters in file names, so I don't 
> think we should allow `+'.  If we do, we would have hard time explaining 
> why other characters are not allowed.

Perhaps some kind of escape-encoding mechanism could be used
then?

> What is the problem, anyway?  Makeinfo does TRT when two file names clash 
> after removing characters such as `+'.

Links to anchors won't necessarily redirect to the right place,
will they?  <META REFRESH> cannot be specialized based on a
#fragment name.

e.g., a trivialized example of something that actually comes up in
libavl (I would use - and + instead of [ and ] but my copy of Texinfo
is patched):

    @node Top
    @top Example

    @menu
    * a::
    * b::
    * c::
    @end menu

    @node a
    @chapter a

    @anchor{[}

    foo

    @node b
    @chapter b

    @anchor{]}

    bar

    @node c
    @chapter c

    @xref{[}.

    @xref{]}.

which elicits the following errors from makeinfo:

    address@hidden:~/avl/tmp(0)$ makeinfo --html foo.texi
    foo.texi:20: Anchors `]' and `[' map to the same file name.
    foo.texi:20: @anchor command ignored; references to it will not work.
    foo.texi:20: Rename this anchor or use the `--no-split' option.
    makeinfo: Removing output file `/home/blp/avl/tmp/foo/index.html' due to 
errors; use --force to preserve.
    address@hidden:~/avl/tmp(2)$
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