>>> 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
>>> 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 "/". --[[Joey]]
+>>> separator is "/". Windows will be supported when someone sends me a
+>>> comprehansive and not ugly or performance impacting patch. :-) --[[Joey]]