Re: [bug #33373] makeinfo adds a spurious period for @pxref before closing parenthesis

[Patrice Dumas]

On Sun, May 22, 2011 at 11:07:01PM +0000, Karl Berry wrote:
> Hi again Hilmar,
> 
>     <http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?33373>
>     Summary: makeinfo adds a spurious period for @pxref before
>     closing parenthesis
> 
> Thanks for the report, I don't think I agree that the period is
> spurious.  It unambiguously indicates the end of the node name.  If it
> wasn't there, we would also have to consider ) as marking the end of a
> node name, that is, ) would not be allowed in node names.  That seems a
> much worse outcome.  I see the reftex manual has node names with parens.

I agree.

> I see that the Texinfo manual (Node Line Requirements) currently says
> that parens are not allowed in node names.  I think that's because of
> cross-manual xrefs and menu entries that use parens to specify the Info
> file name.  I don't want to add another case where parens are special.
> I should probably relax the text in the manual.

What is not allowed, in reality, and leads to an error message is parentheses
beginning at the beginning of the node name as you said:

 @node (man)bad

 c.texi:6: Syntax for an external node used for `(man)bad'


Maybe there is still a bug since even if followed by a node name ending
punctuation character, @pxref leads to adding a colon, like

@pxref{(manual)ref, aa}.

leads to

*note aa: (manual)ref..

I can easily fix that, though, as the code already exists for @xref.

-- 
Pat