doc: stop @ref from swallowing the colon after it

[jll63]

(Written by Claude Code, on behalf of @jll63.)

A colon is legal in a qualified C++ name, so MrDocs takes one that immediately follows an @ref as part of the target, and the colon then disappears from the output. Thirteen doc comments did this, and all thirteen rendered wrong:

//! @li @ref policies::std_rtti: Use standard RTTI.

renders as "policies::std_rtti Use standard RTTI." — separator gone, two sentences run together. Nothing in the build catches it: the reference still resolves, only the punctuation is lost.

The fix

A period is not a valid identifier character, so it survives. Every one of these descriptions already began with a capital, so nine of the thirteen are a one-character change with the wording untouched.

Three more are a colon that introduces a code block, which has to stay a colon — it now attaches to a word instead of to the reference (, as follows:). The last, in boost_type_erasure.hpp, was a colon introducing an explanation mid-sentence, and becomes a full stop.

Sites: core.hpp (2), default_registry.hpp (6), initialize.hpp, preamble.hpp, macros.hpp (2), interop/boost_type_erasure.hpp.

Three other spellings, rejected by rendering them

attempt	result
{empty} between the reference and the colon	comes out as a literal {empty} — MrDocs escapes the braces — and the colon is still eaten
a space before the colon	works, but leaves " :" in the prose
the house - em-dash	worst of the three: at the head of the text following a reference it becomes a nested list item, so each entry rendered as a bullet with a sub-bullet under it

That last one is worth recording, since - is the house em-dash elsewhere and looks like the obvious choice here.

Verification

Generated the reference (460 pages) and checked all thirteen individually: each separator present, each link still resolving, and no sub-bullets in default_registry's policy list. Build clean, 160/160 tests pass.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

https://claude.ai/code/session_01Uegbpo2mmwkWaHsffQtmeB

[cppalliance-bot]

An automated preview of the documentation is available at https://102.openmethod.prtest3.cppalliance.org/libs/openmethod/doc/html/index.html

If more commits are pushed to the pull request, the docs will rebuild at the same URL.

2026-09-11 13:04:58 UTC