On Sat, Oct 24, 2026 at 07:59:10PM +0100, Gavin Smith wrote: > As I said in my other email, it is likely this is to support menu entries > to nodes containing full stops. It is possible in indices, but also in the > dir node. > > I found this change log entry: > > 2008-05-12 Karl Berry <[email protected]> > > * install-info.c (split_entry, add_missing_basenames, > add_mission_descriptions, --name and --description parsing): > use ". " to delimit the description from the node name, > rather than just ".", since we want to support nodes and names > containing "config.status". > * doc/texinfo.txi (Menu Parts): mention need for ". ". > (Invoking install-info): mention bzip2 and lzma checks. > > This was about an entry in the dir file to a node containing the > text "config.status". > > Link to discussion: > https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-texinfo/2008-05/msg00013.html
Actually, upon further research it appears we were still not handling index entries to nodes with names containing full stops correctly in 2024: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-texinfo/2024-12/msg00092.html There the following index entry was reported as broken: * verify.h: assert.h. (line 6) So the variety and prevalance of Info readers that support such entries may actually be quite low. Another point in favour of texi2any always surrounding the node name with DEL in such entries.
