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- <title>GNU Texinfo 4.2: 1.2 Using Texinfo</title>
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- <a name="Using-Texinfo"></a>
- <table cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1" border="0">
- <tr><td valign="middle" align="left">[<a href="Reporting-Bugs.html#Reporting-Bugs" title="Previous section in reading order"> < </a>]</td>
- <td valign="middle" align="left">[<a href="Info-Files.html#Info-Files" title="Next section in reading order"> > </a>]</td>
- <td valign="middle" align="left"> </td>
- <td valign="middle" align="left">[<a href="Overview.html#Overview" title="Beginning of this chapter or previous chapter"> << </a>]</td>
- <td valign="middle" align="left">[<a href="Overview.html#Overview" title="Up section"> Up </a>]</td>
- <td valign="middle" align="left">[<a href="Texinfo-Mode.html#Texinfo-Mode" title="Next chapter"> >> </a>]</td>
- <td valign="middle" align="left"> </td>
- <td valign="middle" align="left"> </td>
- <td valign="middle" align="left"> </td>
- <td valign="middle" align="left"> </td>
- <td valign="middle" align="left">[<a href="texinfo.html#Top" title="Cover (top) of document">Top</a>]</td>
- <td valign="middle" align="left">[<a href="texinfo_toc.html#SEC_Contents" title="Table of contents">Contents</a>]</td>
- <td valign="middle" align="left">[<a href="Command-and-Variable-Index.html#Command-and-Variable-Index" title="Index">Index</a>]</td>
- <td valign="middle" align="left">[<a href="texinfo_abt.html#SEC_About" title="About (help)"> ? </a>]</td>
- </tr></table>
- <hr size="1">
- <a name="Using-Texinfo-1"></a>
- <h2 class="section">1.2 Using Texinfo</h2>
- <a name="index-Using-Texinfo-in-general"></a>
- <a name="index-Texinfo_002c-introduction-to"></a>
- <a name="index-Introduction-to-Texinfo"></a>
- <p>Using Texinfo, you can create a printed document with the normal
- features of a book, including chapters, sections, cross references, and
- indices. From the same Texinfo source file, you can create a
- menu-driven, online Info file with nodes, menus, cross references, and
- indices. You can also create from that same source file an HTML output
- file suitable for use with a web browser, or an XML file. <cite>The GNU
- Emacs Manual</cite> is a good example of a Texinfo file, as is this manual.
- </p>
- <p>To make a printed document, you process a Texinfo source file with the
- TeX typesetting program (but the Texinfo language is very different
- and much stricter than TeX’s usual language, plain TeX). This
- creates a DVI file that you can typeset and print as a book or report
- (see section <a href="Hardcopy.html#Hardcopy">Formatting and Printing Hardcopy</a>).
- </p>
- <a name="index-makeinfo"></a>
- <p>To output an Info file, process your Texinfo source with the
- <code>makeinfo</code> utility or Emacs’s <code>texinfo-format-buffer</code> command.
- You can install the result in your Info tree (see section <a href="Installing-an-Info-File.html#Installing-an-Info-File">Installing an Info File</a>).
- </p>
- <p>To output an HTML file, run <code>makeinfo --html</code> on your Texinfo
- source. You can (for example) install the result on your web site.
- </p>
- <a name="index-Docbook_002c-converting-to-Texinfo"></a>
- <a name="index-Conversion_002c-from-Docbook-to-Texinfo"></a>
- <p>To output an XML file, run <code>makeinfo --xml</code> on your Texinfo source.
- To output DocBook (a particular form of XML), run <code>makeinfo
- --docbook</code>. If you want to convert from Docbook <em>to</em> Texinfo,
- please see <a href="http://docbook2X.sourceforge.net/">http://docbook2X.sourceforge.net/</a>.
- </p>
- <a name="index-Output-formats_002c-supporting-more"></a>
- <a name="index-SGML_002dtools-output-format"></a>
- <p>If you are a programmer and would like to contribute to the GNU project
- by implementing additional output formats for Texinfo, that would be
- excellent. But please do not write a separate translator texi2foo for
- your favorite format foo! That is the hard way to do the job, and makes
- extra work in subsequent maintenance, since the Texinfo language is
- continually being enhanced and updated. Instead, the best approach is
- modify <code>makeinfo</code> to generate the new format, as it does now for
- Info, plain text, HTML, XML, and DocBook.
- </p>
- <p>TeX works with virtually all printers; Info works with virtually all
- computer terminals; the HTML output works with virtually all web
- browsers. Thus Texinfo can be used by almost any computer user.
- </p>
- <a name="index-Source-file"></a>
- <p>A Texinfo source file is a plain <small>ASCII</small> file containing text and
- <em>@-commands</em> (words preceded by an ‘<samp>@</samp>’) that tell the
- typesetting and formatting programs what to do. You may edit a Texinfo
- file with any text editor; but it is especially convenient to use GNU
- Emacs since that editor has a special mode, called Texinfo mode, that
- provides various Texinfo-related features. (See section <a href="Texinfo-Mode.html#Texinfo-Mode">Using Texinfo Mode</a>.)
- </p>
- <p>Before writing a Texinfo source file, you should learn about nodes,
- menus, cross references, and the rest, for example by reading this
- manual.
- </p>
- <p>You can use Texinfo to create both online help and printed manuals;
- moreover, Texinfo is freely redistributable. For these reasons, Texinfo
- is the official documentation format of the GNU project. More
- information is available at the <a href="http://www.gnu.org/doc/">GNU documentation web page</a>.
- </p>
- <a name="index-Man-page-output_002c-not-supported"></a>
- <p>From time to time, proposals are made to generate traditional Unix man
- pages from Texinfo source. This is not likely to ever be supported,
- because man pages have a very strict conventional format. Merely
- enhancing <code>makeinfo</code> to output troff format would be
- insufficient. Generating a good man page therefore requires a
- completely different source than the typical Texinfo applications of
- writing a good user tutorial or a good reference manual. This makes
- generating man pages incompatible with the Texinfo design goal of not
- having to document the same information in different ways for different
- output formats. You might as well just write the man page directly.
- </p>
- <a name="index-help2man"></a>
- <a name="index-O_0027Dea_002c-Brendan"></a>
- <p>Man pages still have their place, and if you wish to support them, the
- program <code>help2man</code> may be useful; it generates a traditional man
- page from the ‘<samp>--help</samp>’ output of a program. In fact, this is
- currently used to generate man pages for the Texinfo programs
- themselves. It is GNU software written by Brendan O’Dea, available from
- <a href="ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/help2man/">ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/help2man/</a>.
- </p>
- <hr size="1">
- <table cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1" border="0">
- <tr><td valign="middle" align="left">[<a href="Reporting-Bugs.html#Reporting-Bugs" title="Previous section in reading order"> < </a>]</td>
- <td valign="middle" align="left">[<a href="Info-Files.html#Info-Files" title="Next section in reading order"> > </a>]</td>
- <td valign="middle" align="left"> </td>
- <td valign="middle" align="left">[<a href="Overview.html#Overview" title="Beginning of this chapter or previous chapter"> << </a>]</td>
- <td valign="middle" align="left">[<a href="Overview.html#Overview" title="Up section"> Up </a>]</td>
- <td valign="middle" align="left">[<a href="Texinfo-Mode.html#Texinfo-Mode" title="Next chapter"> >> </a>]</td>
- <td valign="middle" align="left"> </td>
- <td valign="middle" align="left"> </td>
- <td valign="middle" align="left"> </td>
- <td valign="middle" align="left"> </td>
- <td valign="middle" align="left">[<a href="texinfo.html#Top" title="Cover (top) of document">Top</a>]</td>
- <td valign="middle" align="left">[<a href="texinfo_toc.html#SEC_Contents" title="Table of contents">Contents</a>]</td>
- <td valign="middle" align="left">[<a href="Command-and-Variable-Index.html#Command-and-Variable-Index" title="Index">Index</a>]</td>
- <td valign="middle" align="left">[<a href="texinfo_abt.html#SEC_About" title="About (help)"> ? </a>]</td>
- </tr></table>
- <p>
- <font size="-1">
- This document was generated by <em>a tester</em> on <em>a sunny day</em> using <a href="http://www.nongnu.org/texi2html/"><em>texi2html</em></a>.
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