> From: Gavin Smith <[email protected]>
> Date: Thu, 22 Oct 2026 20:07:33 +0100
>
> On Thu, Oct 22, 2026 at 11:36:53AM +0100, Gavin Smith wrote:
> > Looking at the source code of the standalone Info browser, it does not
> > appear set up to handle DEL-quoted index entries. Index entries are dealt
> > with as a special case. So if we changed texi2any to surround with DEL
> > bytes
> > the text of an index entry that contained a colon, then no previously
> > released
> > Info browser would be able to read such an entry. It does not seem
> > justified
> > to create such a breakage merely for the difficulty of implementation in
> > Emacs Info mode.
>
> I had another look at the source code for Info and such quoted index
> entries such as the following actually work, although texi2any won't
> produce such index entries:
>
> * ^?Texinfo::Convert::Converter initialization^?:
> ^?Texinfo::Convert::Converter Converter Initialization^?.
>
> In scan.c:scan_reference_label:
>
> if (!in_index || inptr[label_len] == INFO_QUOTE)
> {
> len = read_quoted_string (inptr + label_len, ":", max_lines,
> &entry->nodename);
> canonicalize_whitespace (entry->nodename);
> if (!len && !entry->filename)
> return 0; /* Input invalid. */
> label_len += len;
> }
> else
> {
> /* If in an index node, go forward to the last colon on the line
> (not preceded by a newline, NUL or DEL). This is in order to
> support index entries containing colons. This should work fine
> as long as the node name does not contain a colon as well. */
>
> It's handled by the first condition as (inptr[label_len] == INFO_QUOTE) is
> true.
>
> So we could consider changing texi2any to output quoting DELs for the index
> entry text, too (now that Emacs supports these, thanks to Eli).
That'd be appreciated, thanks.
> One possibility is to double check what exactly Emacs supported before, and
> only output the DELs for input that Emacs didn't support. I belive if there
> was only a single colon not followed by whitespace, Emacs managed to treat
> it as an index entry.
I don't think that's true, but maybe I'm thinking about a different
case. Can you show an example of an entry with colons which you think
Emacs should be able to support? The ones that Patrice provides in
his colons_in_index_entries_and_node.info file (which he sent to the
Emacs bug#57277) didn't work in Emacs, with the sole exception of the
first one, which says
* :: ^?One::node, with entries.^?.
With the updated Emacs Info reader it works better: the 1st index
entry leads to the wrong node, and 4th and 5th error out (No such
node), but the rest do work, although Emacs still doesn't recognize
the format well enough because the usual highlighting of menu entries
is wrong.
> There's no downside in outputting the DELs in other cases, as far as I can
> tell: where there is a double colon ("::") or colon followed by space (": ").
Right.
