System: Slackware Linux (version 14.2)
CPUs: Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU N270 @1.60GHz
It doesn't seem problematic to generate files named tdbc::connection.n, etc.
bash-4.3$ ls /usr/man/man3/Tdbc*
/usr/man/man3/Tdbc_Init.3.gz
bash-4.3$ ls /usr/man/mann/tdbc*
/usr/man/mann/tdbc.n.gz /usr/man/mann/tdbc_resultset.n.gz
/usr/man/mann/tdbc_connection.n.gz /usr/man/mann/tdbc_sqlite3.n.gz
/usr/man/mann/tdbc_mapSqlState.n.gz /usr/man/mann/tdbc_statement.n.gz
/usr/man/mann/tdbc_mysql.n.gz /usr/man/mann/tdbc_tokenize.n.gz
/usr/man/mann/tdbc_odbc.n.gz
bash-4.3$
Tcl Core (Mirror)
ChangeLog
* unix/installManPage: Remap non-alphanumeric sequences in filenames
to single underscores (especially colons).
Perhaps an .info file would be portable to various platforms.