Re: \ in macro?

[Karl Berry]

         @refcommand \arpeggio 
         ...
         ! File ended while scanning use of \initial.
         ...
         how do I get a \ in an index entry using the macro system? 

Hello Han-Wen,

Well, I fear the underlying problem here is the use of \ as the escape
character in the index files instead of @.

The macro code in texinfo.tex correctly generates an entry like this:
  \entry {\code {\xeatspaces {\arpeggio}}}{1}
But as you can see, the \ before arpeggio is going to cause trouble.

Making the index (and all the other auxiliary) files use @ instead of \
is something I really want to do, but I'm afraid it's not going to
happen soon.  texindex has to change at the same time, which is not
going to be fun.

Meanwhile, I see two choices:

1) put your index entries outside macros.

2) use texi2dvi -e to expand the macros with makeinfo.  I tried this,
   and it seemed to work, since then TeX only sees
@cindex \arpeggio
   without any macros being involved, and that was fine.

Sorry that I don't have a real fix ...

Thanks for the report,
karl