> From: Gavin Smith <[email protected]> > Date: Fri, 23 Oct 2026 12:50:18 +0100 > Cc: [email protected] > > On Fri, Oct 23, 2026 at 09:27:53AM +0300, Eli Zaretskii wrote: > > > 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? > > In one version of elisp.info (27.2), there are the following index entries: > > > * :deferred, JSONRPC keyword: JSONRPC deferred requests. > (line 16) > * :notification-dispatcher: JSONRPC Overview. (line 20) > * :request-dispatcher: JSONRPC Overview. (line 20) > > Opening the file with a command like "C-u M-x info RET ./elisp.info RET", > accessing these index entries works with "i:deferred" etc. Pressing return > on these menu entries when you are in the index node also works. > > In emacs.info (from version 29.1.90), there are the following index entries: > > * :d (Dired): Operating on Files. (line 192) > * :e (Dired): Operating on Files. (line 204) > * :s (Dired): Operating on Files. (line 200) > * :v (Dired): Operating on Files. (line 196) > > These all work as expected (tested with Emacs 29.3 (Debian)).
Yes, because the leading colon is explicitly supported in the relevant regular expressions. But not any following colons. > Running 'i:s (Dired)<RET>' does work and finds the relevant index entry. > > The only niggle is that the search appears to omit the leading colon, > leading other index entries, such as "M-s a C-s (Dired)" to be found. > > I asusme this is part of what the comment at the start of info.el > was about: > > ;; Note that nowadays we expect Info files to be made using makeinfo. > ;; In particular we make these assumptions: > ;; - a menu item MAY contain colons but not colon-space ": " > ;; - a menu item ending with ": " (but not ":: ") is an index entry > ;; - a node name MAY NOT contain a colon > ;; This distinction is to support indexing of computer programming > ;; language terms that may contain ":" but not ": ". Yes, and that means Emacs doesn't really support colons in Index entries in arbitrary places. > > 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.^?. > > > > I don't think any of those will work because the node names are all > quoted If quoted nodes were the problem, I'd expect an error message saying that the node ^?foo^? cannot be found. But that's not what I see. I see errors about wrong-type-argument, meaning that Emacs expected to have a string but ended up with nil.
