Re: a scheduled compatibility handling in the Texinfo language?

[Karl Berry]

My basic idea about compatibility (wrt Texinfo) is that we should always
intend to be completely compatible.  The things we cleaned up in the
process of the Perl implementation notwithstanding -- I don't see such a
thing happening again.  Therefore I'm not seeing the need for explicit
@compatibility... commands.

    * the warning (or not) for user defined macros without argument not followed
      by empty braces
    * warnings for : in index entries

These are problems but I don't see how compatibility commands would ease
the pain for users.  Giving a warning is, in a sense, a compatibility
decision -- not making it an error, that is.

Users are going to hate the warnings about :'s in index entries,
especially when we have no good solution for them to adopt.  Granted the
resulting Info is invalid, but ... I'm still thinking it would be better
to wait on the warnings on that until there is a clean way users can fix
their documents?

    * deprecation warnings for @refill

Well, when I run (Perl) makeinfo on texinfo.txi, there aren't
deprecation warnings for the zillions of @refill cmds it still has.  And
I don't think there should be such a warning.  I'd rather retain the
historical baggage than make users deal with warnings for no practical
purpose.

karl