> I take it this is a problem when checking out a wiki in windows, not when
> browsing to urls that have colons in them from windows? --[[Joey]]
+
+>> Correct. You can't directly check out a wiki's repository from Windows if it includes filenames with those characters; you will get errors on those filenames.
+
+>>> Ok, first, if a windows user fails to check out ikiwiki's own svn^Wgit
+>>> repo on windows due to the colons, that seems to be a bug in svn^Wgit
+>>> on windows -- those programs should deal with colons in filenames being
+>>> checked in/out somehow. Like they deal with windows using backslash
+>>> rather than slash, presumably. And there's nothing ikiwiki can do if
+>>> the source repo it's working on has a file with a problem character
+>>> added to it, since the breakage will happen at the revision control
+>>> system level.
+
+>>>> Just a quick note that the version control community generally doesn't
+>>>> agree with that view. They'll store what you ask them to store. If you
+>>>> want to work cross platform, then you need to make sure that all
+>>>> your file names work on all the platforms you're interested in. (Note: many systems will
+>>>> warn on commit, but not all. Many systems also have a way to fix
+>>>> the problem without checking out, but not all.) Another common place for this to
+>>>> arise is case insensitive file systems. If you have two files committed
+>>>> that differ only in case, then you cannot check out on a Mac in most systems.
+
+>>> OTOH, there are some simple mods to ikiwiki that can make it escape
+>>> colons etc the same way it already escapes other problem characters
+>>> like "*", "?", etc. Without actually testing it, it should suffice to
+>>> edit `IkiWiki.pm` and modify `titlepage` and `linkpage`, removing the
+>>> colon from the character class in each. Also modify the
+>>> `wiki_file_regexp` similarly. Then ikiwiki will read and
+>>> write files with escaped colons, avoiding the problem.
+>>>
+>>> So that's a simple fix, but on the gripping hand, I can't just make
+>>> that change, because it would break all existing unix-based
+>>> wikis that actually contain colons in their filenames, requiring an
+>>> annoying transition. I could do a OS test and do it in Windows, but then
+>>> there would be interop problems if a Windows and non-windows system both
+>>> acted on the same wiki source.
+
+>>>> I haven't checked the source, but need this break existing wikis?
+>>>> I can imagine a system where a colon gets converted to something safe,
+>>>> and the safe encoding gets converted back to a colon. But if you
+>>>> already have a colon, that doesn't get converted and stays a colon, and
+>>>> so it should still work shouldn't it? The only
+>>>> problem would be with pages that already have the 'safe encoding for a colon'.
+>>>> They'll suddenly change names. Well, I should finish frying my current fish
+>>>> before taking on something new, so I'll shut up now :). -- [[Will]]
+
+>>>>> If `linkpage()` is changed to escape colons, then links to pages
+>>>>> with literal colons in their names will stop working; ikiwiki will
+>>>>> instead look for page names with escaped colons. --[[Joey]]
+
+>>> So, I guess it has to be a config option, possibly defaulting on
+>>> when the OS is Windows. And if being able to checkout/etc the wiki
+>>> source on windows systems is desired, you'd have to remember to turn
+>>> that on when setting up a wiki, even if the wiki was hosted on unix.
+>>>
+>>> Ok, `wiki_file_chars` config option added, set to
+>>> `"-[:alnum:]+/._"` to exclude colons from filenames read or written by
+>>> ikiwiki. [[done]]
+>>>
+>>> BTW, I suspect there are lots of other problems with actually running
+>>> ikiwiki on windows, including its assumption that the directory
+>>> separator is "/". Windows will be supported when someone sends me a
+>>> comprehansive and not ugly or performance impacting patch. :-) --[[Joey]]