Re: Warning about ":" in @ref

[Patrice Dumas]

On Fri, Aug 04, 2023 at 04:06:47PM -0700, Raymond Toy wrote:
> With texinfo 7.0.2 (which comes with Fedora 38), I get warnings like:
> 
> |warning: @ref node name should not contain `:' |
> 
> The offending ref is “@ref{ext:encapsulate}”, and corresponding anchor is
> “ext:encapsulate”. I didn’t see anything in the manual about this
> constraint, but I didn’t look too hard. However, if there shouldn’t be a
> colon in a @ref, shouldn’t there a corresponding warning if an anchor
> contains a colon too?

There is no actual issue with anchors containing : in Info, only when
they are referred to.  Even in references, if the names are 'quoted',
which is the default with texi2any and the info reader supports the quotes
there is no issue.  I do not think that it is the way forward to add
warnings for such names.  The way forward would be to have the Emacs
Info reader modified to read the quoted nodes such that all the warnings
can be off in the default case.

In the "‘@node’ Line Requirements" node, this is explicit:

   • Unfortunately, you cannot reliably use periods, commas, or colons
     within a node name; these can confuse some Info readers.
     ‘texi2any’ quotes problematic node names and labels by default, but
     some Info readers do not recognize this syntax.  Node name and
     label quoting causes ‘DEL’ characters (‘CTRL-?’, character number
     127, often rendered as ‘^?’) to appear around the name.  To remove
     node names and labels quoting, you can set the customization
     variable ‘INFO_SPECIAL_CHARS_QUOTE’ to ‘0’ (*note Other
     Customization Variables::).

     ‘texi2any’ warns about such problematic usage in node names, menu
     items, and cross-references.  If you don't want to see the
     warnings, you can set the customization variable
     ‘INFO_SPECIAL_CHARS_WARNING’ to ‘0’ (*note Other Customization
     Variables::).

-- 
Pat