> Date: Sun, 25 Oct 2026 23:04:30 +0100 > From: [email protected] > Cc: Gavin Smith <[email protected]>, [email protected] > > On Sun, Oct 25, 2026 at 09:44:48AM +0200, Eli Zaretskii wrote: > > > I think we should do it. I wanted to see if anybody else had an opinion > > > on > > > it. > > Not exactly the same, here a leading parenthesis in a node name in a > @printindex for which I just added DEL-quoting. We discussed the > subject earlier and I implemented it for most situations, but I missed > that case. > > I attach the .texi and .info in case you would like to test it.
This is very hard to support properly in Emacs. The reason is that, once the node name is gleaned from its reference, either in a menu or in a cross-reference, the Emacs Info reader strips the ^?..^? quoting from it. That's because the node name is then used in gazillion places: for entering it into node history and comparing with other node names, for showing it on the mode line, the header line, and the breadcrumbs, for displaying it in a tooltip when the mouse hovers above the reference -- and, of course, for going to that node when the user types RET or clicks the mouse on the reference. (Keeping the quoting instead would require to remove them each time the node name is used as a string, without interpreting it, which is both much more complex and would create a lot more temporary strings all over.) And when the quoting is stripped, there's nothing to tell the rest of the code that the parenthesized part of the node name is not a reference to a file name of an external manual, a convention that is deeply entrenched in how an Info reader handles node names. Moreover, I don't see how such node names can be supported consistently in any Info reader, because at least when the user tells the reader to go to a node by name, typing "(foo)bar" at the reader's prompt _must_ be interpreted as node "bar" inside file "foo", or else we will break compatibility with a long-standing tradition in Info usage. And it's unreasonable to ask the user to type the quoting characters to prevent such interpretation. I just tried such a node name in the stand-alone Info reader, with the Info file Patrice posted, and it, of course, interprets such node names as external ones, as I would expect. So I think we do not need to support such node names. If some manual uses them, they are on their own.
