Re: Arbritary characters (like colons) in node names (proposal)

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2014 21:28:02 +0100
> From: Gavin Smith <address@hidden>
> 
> I have seen in the mailing list archives that there has been
> discussion of allowing characters like colons in node names and
> indices over the years. It would be useful for languages like C++ or
> anywhere else.
> 
> The idea that was floated was to have some kind of quoting in Info
> format. See, e.g.
> http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-texinfo/2001-04/msg00026.html.
> http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-texinfo/2001-04/msg00002.html
> Unfortunately, it's never been done.
> 
> This is useful and necessary functionality, and does seem
> implementable, so I thought I would try to lay out in a bit more
> detail what would be required so we can discuss whether this would
> work or not.

Thanks.

> Backwards compatibility:
> 
> These would not work in old browsers, but references like these don't
> work any way.

They don't work as references, but they are still readable.  Your
suggestion, which uses control characters, will require the Info
readers to remove them from what is displayed, otherwise the text will
look garbled on display.  Perhaps using ASCII characters for quoting
will ease the compatibility problems during the transition period.

Also, since technically control characters are allowed in an Info
file, you will have to come up with a scheme to produce literal address@hidden(
etc. sequences as well.