Re: warning for index entry with :

[Patrice Dumas]

On Sun, Sep 25, 2011 at 06:52:53PM +0000, Karl Berry wrote:
> Although I know we talked about this warning with : in index entries, it
> is seeming pretty problematic to me now.
> 
> Ok, so we're going to get rid of all that chapter so it doesn't actually
> matter for us, but I'm sure there are other Perl or C++ or other manuals
> which use : in such cases, and there is no reasonable alternative.

Indeed.

> Choices I can see:
> 1) forget about the warning -- simplest.

But the Info files resulting are not correct...

> 2) have a texinfo-level option to turn off the warning -- ok, but a
>      language wart forever.

That do not look like a good option.  There is already --no-warn, 
looks enough to me.

> 3) have a cmdline option to turn off the warning -- easier, but it's
>      really an aspect of the document, not the invocation.

I don't think there ie 

> 4) really fix the problem, and all the related problems, by devising some
>    quoting mechanism for the special chars -- ideal, but just seems like
>      too big a job to take on now, delaying the years-delayed release
>      still further ...

I think that this is by far the best alternative.  Indeed, node
names are becoming more and more like normal text, this would be 
a logical step forward.

My preference would be keep the warning as is until there is a way
to escape all the characters that cannot be in node names.

-- 
Pat