Re: XeTeX encoding problem

[Karl Berry]

    I really don't understand the code in \pdfgettoks in texinfo.tex. 

Not sure if this is still relevant, but it's not just about page
numbers, is it?  I thought that crazy stuff was at least partly about
handling brace characters that should show up literally in the pdf
bookmarks.  I believe Han The Thanh (principal author of pdftex) and
Hans Hagen wrote it many years ago, late 90s maybe.  I don't seem to
have any old email that specifically talks about it, though.  Sadly, svn
blame reports "Skipping binary file: 'texinfo.tex'" (even though it's
not a binary file), so can't glean information that way.  I thought that
used to work.  Oh well.  Can keep delving if need be ...

By the way, I don't understand ChangeLog entries like this:

    2016-03-23  Masamichi Hosoda  <address@hidden>
            * doc/texinfo.tex (\pdfgettoks, \pdfaddtokens, \adn, \poptoks, 
            \maketoks, \makelink, \pdflink, \done): New Macro.
            Add XeTeX PDF table of contents page number link support.

\pdfgettoks and the rest aren't "new macros" here.  Are they?  I don't
see new definitions being added.


I also happened to notice:
      % In the case of XeTeX, xdvipdfmx converts strings to UTF-16.
      % Therefore \txiescapepdf is not necessary.

A string like "\node" (where we don't want \n to be interpreted as a
newline) or unbalanced parentheses won't cause problems?  -k