Re: Invisible colons in Emacs Info.

[karl@freefriends.org (Karl Berry)]

    ... situation for menu subtopic names is the following:
    1.  They can contain colons, but not colons followed by a space.
    2.  There must be at least one space separating the subtopic name and
        the node name.

I think this is ok, because there are few manuals which lack a space
between a subtopic and node name.  As I said, the only ones I could find
were a few of the xemacs subsidiary manuals.  We should inform their
authors.

    Some, like Karl, would prefer not to allow colons at all until a new

Well, I think the rule above is ok.  The benefit, of allowing colons in
subtopic names, is worthwhile enough that I don't mind the additional
complexity, since the real fix is not on the horizon.

    Stefan and Karl pointed out that condition 2 used not to be necessary

And condition 1 did not obtain; colons were not allowed.

    If we want 1.  but not 2. then things become much more complicated and
    precise specs would need to be agreed upon.

1-but-not-2 requires the "real fix" or "better solution" or whatever you
want to call it, as far as I can tell.  (Quoting syntax.)

   Problem is that it still fails on:

      * name1:foo:node.           des:cription.

   because it thinks the menu entry name is "name1:foo:node.           des"
   and the node name is "cription".  I'm sure we can tune the disambiguation
   by saying that menu entries can have `:' but cannot have `.' after the `:'
   or some other such heuristic.  

Huh?  According to the rule above, the above is invalid because it lacks
a space, right?  It would have to be written as:

Name1:foo: node.  des:description.

I don't like the idea of trying to allow subtopic names to be followed
by :<nonspace> based on periods.  If that's what you were saying.
It's simpler both to understand and to implement to just require :<space>
as a separator.  Or :<tab>, I suppose.

Ok?

k