Re: comma in @node or @float line

Hi Patrice,

I think you're discussing a hypothetical future rather than the current
situation (which I believe you know very well :), but anyway, I'll reply
for both cases.

    what constructs should be accepted regarding comma in @node 

As for @node, the rule is simple: commas are not allowed.
Period :).

    and @float line?

As for @float [TYPE][,LABEL], I guess @comma is perhaps allowed within
TYPE, although I never tested it and would be pleasantly surprised if it
works.  @comma is not allowed within LABEL.  Literal commas aren't
allowed within either.

The purpose of @comma is to allow insertion of commas in the argument to
various commands which take comma-delimited options.  It obviously can't
be used in places where @-commands aren't allowed in the first place,
like node names or xref names.

So much for the current state of things.


As for the hypothetical future, I am really not sure.  It's obviously
only an issue when commands are allowed in node names, which right now
they're not.  

One problem is that I'm not too sure what algorithm will work.  Given
the need to parse a node line into @node a,b,c,d how do you determine
where the commas are?  The rule that comes to mind is to look for commas
not preceded by @ at the outermost brace level, but I'm not at all sure
that is reliable.

Perhaps it would be better to invent a new command which takes only a
single node name as an argument.  Then there would be no need to parse
the commas.  Of course it won't work with non-tree-structured manuals,
but who cares ...

k
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