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This chapter describes how to create and install info files. See section Info files, for general information about the file format itself.
makeinfo is a program that converts a Texinfo file into an Info
file, HTML file, or plain text. texinfo-format-region and
texinfo-format-buffer are GNU Emacs functions that convert
Texinfo to Info.
For information on installing the Info file in the Info system, see section Installing an Info File.
makeinfo Preferred
The makeinfo utility creates an Info file from a Texinfo source
file more quickly than either of the Emacs formatting commands and
provides better error messages. We recommend it. makeinfo is a
C program that is independent of Emacs. You do not need to run Emacs to
use makeinfo, which means you can use makeinfo on machines
that are too small to run Emacs. You can run makeinfo in any one
of three ways: from an operating system shell, from a shell inside
Emacs, or by typing the C-c C-m C-r or the C-c C-m C-b
command in Texinfo mode in Emacs.
The texinfo-format-region and the texinfo-format-buffer
commands are useful if you cannot run makeinfo. Also, in some
circumstances, they format short regions or buffers more quickly than
makeinfo.
makeinfo from a Shell
To create an Info file from a Texinfo file, type makeinfo
followed by the name of the Texinfo file. Thus, to create the Info
file for Bison, type the following to the shell:
makeinfo bison.texinfo
(You can run a shell inside Emacs by typing M-x shell.)
makeinfo
The makeinfo command takes a number of options. Most often,
options are used to set the value of the fill column and specify the
footnote style. Each command line option is a word preceded by
`--' or a letter preceded by `-'. You can use abbreviations
for the long option names as long as they are unique.
For example, you could use the following shell command to create an Info file for `bison.texinfo' in which each line is filled to only 68 columns:
makeinfo --fill-column=68 bison.texinfo
You can write two or more options in sequence, like this:
makeinfo --no-split --fill-column=70 ...
This would keep the Info file together as one possibly very long file and would also set the fill column to 70.
The options are:
-D var
@set var in the Texinfo file (see section @set, @clear, and @value).
--commands-in-node-names
@-commands in node names. This is not recommended, as it
can probably never be implemented in TeX. It also makes
makeinfo much slower. Also, this option is ignored when
`--no-validate' is used. See section Pointer Validation, for more
details.
--error-limit=limit
-e limit
makeinfo will report
before exiting (on the assumption that continuing would be useless);
default 100.
--fill-column=width
-f width
--footnote-style=style
-s style
@footnotestyle command (see section Footnotes). When the
footnote style is `separate', makeinfo makes a new node
containing the footnotes found in the current node. When the footnote
style is `end', makeinfo places the footnote references at
the end of the current node. Ignored with `--html'.
--force
-F
--help
-h
--html
-I dir
@include command. By default,
makeinfo searches only the current directory. If dir is
not given, the current directory `.' is appended. Note that
dir can actually be a list of several directories separated by the
usual path separator character (`:' on Unix, `;' on
MS-DOS/MS-Windows).
--macro-expand=file
-E file
makeinfo and then discarded. This option is used by
@command{texi2dvi} if you are using an old version of `texinfo.tex'
that does not support @macro.
--no-headers
--no-split
makeinfo. By default, large
output files (where the size is greater than 70k bytes) are split into
smaller subfiles. For Info output, each one is approximately 50k bytes.
For HTML output, each file contains one node (see section Generating HTML).
--no-pointer-validate
--no-validate
makeinfo. This can also
be done with the @novalidate command (see section Use TeX). Normally, after a Texinfo file is processed, some consistency
checks are made to ensure that cross references can be resolved, etc.
See section Pointer Validation.
--no-warn
--number-sections
--no-number-footnotes
makeinfo
numbers each footnote sequentially in a single node, resetting the
current footnote number to 1 at the start of each node.
--output=file
-o file
@setfilename command found in the
Texinfo source (see section @setfilename). If file is `-', output
goes to standard output and `--no-split' is implied. For split
HTML output, file is the name of the output file for the top node
(see section Generating HTML).
-P dir
@include.
If dir is not given, the current directory `.' is prepended.
See `-I' for more details.
--paragraph-indent=indent
-p indent
@paragraphindent command (see section Paragraph Indenting). The value
of indent is interpreted as follows:
--reference-limit=limit
-r limit
makeinfo will make without reporting a warning. If a node has more
than this number of references in it, makeinfo will make the
references but also report a warning. The default is 1000.
-U var
@clear var in the Texinfo file (see section @set, @clear, and @value).
--verbose
makeinfo to display messages saying what it is doing.
Normally, makeinfo only outputs messages if there are errors or
warnings.
--version
-V
If you do not suppress pointer validation with the `--no-validate'
option or the @novalidate command in the source file (see section Use TeX), makeinfo will check the validity of the final
Info file. Mostly, this means ensuring that nodes you have referenced
really exist. Here is a complete list of what is checked:
Some Texinfo documents might fail during the validation phase because
they use commands like @value and @definfoenclose in
node definitions and cross-references inconsistently. Consider the
following example:
@set nodename Node 1
@node @value{nodename}, Node 2, Top, Top
This is node 1.
@node Node 2, , Node 1, Top
This is node 2.
Here, the node "Node 1" was referenced both verbatim and through
@value.
By default, makeinfo fails such cases, because node names are not
fully expanded until they are written to the output file. You should
always try to reference nodes consistently; e.g., in the above example,
the second @node line should have also used @value.
However, if, for some reason, you must reference node names
inconsistently, and makeinfo fails to validate the file, you can
use the `--commands-in-node-names' option to force makeinfo
to perform the expensive expansion of all node names it finds in the
document. This might considerably slow down the program, though;
twofold increase in conversion time was measured for large documents
such as the Jargon file.
The support for @-commands in @node directives is not
general enough to be freely used. For example, if the example above
redefined nodename somewhere in the document, makeinfo
will fail to convert it, even if invoked with the
`--commands-in-node-names' option.
`--commands-in-node-names' has no effect if the `--no-validate' option is given.
makeinfo inside Emacs
You can run makeinfo in GNU Emacs Texinfo mode by using either the
makeinfo-region or the makeinfo-buffer commands. In
Texinfo mode, the commands are bound to C-c C-m C-r and C-c
C-m C-b by default.
When you invoke either makeinfo-region or
makeinfo-buffer, Emacs prompts for a file name, offering the
name of the visited file as the default. You can edit the default
file name in the minibuffer if you wish, before pressing RET to
start the makeinfo process.
The Emacs makeinfo-region and makeinfo-buffer commands
run the makeinfo program in a temporary shell buffer. If
makeinfo finds any errors, Emacs displays the error messages in
the temporary buffer.
You can parse the error messages by typing C-x `
(next-error). This causes Emacs to go to and position the
cursor on the line in the Texinfo source that makeinfo thinks
caused the error. See section `Running make or Compilers Generally' in The GNU Emacs Manual, for more
information about using the next-error command.
In addition, you can kill the shell in which the makeinfo
command is running or make the shell buffer display its most recent
output.
makeinfo job
(from makeinfo-region or makeinfo-buffer).
makeinfo shell buffer to display its most recent
output.(Note that the parallel commands for killing and recentering a TeX job are C-c C-t C-k and C-c C-t C-l. See section Formatting and Printing in Texinfo Mode.)
You can specify options for makeinfo by setting the
makeinfo-options variable with either the M-x
edit-options or the M-x set-variable command, or by setting the
variable in your `.emacs' initialization file.
For example, you could write the following in your `.emacs' file:
(setq makeinfo-options
"--paragraph-indent=0 --no-split
--fill-column=70 --verbose")
For more information, see section Options for makeinfo, as well as "Editing Variable Values," "Examining
and Setting Variables," and "Init File" in The GNU Emacs
Manual.
texinfo-format... Commands
In GNU Emacs in Texinfo mode, you can format part or all of a Texinfo
file with the texinfo-format-region command. This formats the
current region and displays the formatted text in a temporary buffer
called `*Info Region*'.
Similarly, you can format a buffer with the
texinfo-format-buffer command. This command creates a new
buffer and generates the Info file in it. Typing C-x C-s will
save the Info file under the name specified by the
@setfilename line which must be near the beginning of the
Texinfo file.
texinfo-format-region
texinfo-format-buffer
The texinfo-format-region and texinfo-format-buffer
commands provide you with some error checking, and other functions can
provide you with further help in finding formatting errors. These
procedures are described in an appendix; see section Formatting Mistakes.
However, the makeinfo program is often faster and
provides better error checking (see section Running makeinfo inside Emacs).
You can format Texinfo files for Info using batch-texinfo-format
and Emacs Batch mode. You can run Emacs in Batch mode from any shell,
including a shell inside of Emacs. (See section `Command Line Switches and Arguments' in The GNU Emacs Manual.)
Here is a shell command to format all the files that end in `.texinfo' in the current directory:
emacs -batch -funcall batch-texinfo-format *.texinfo
Emacs processes all the files listed on the command line, even if an error occurs while attempting to format some of them.
Run batch-texinfo-format only with Emacs in Batch mode as shown;
it is not interactive. It kills the Batch mode Emacs on completion.
batch-texinfo-format is convenient if you lack makeinfo
and want to format several Texinfo files at once. When you use Batch
mode, you create a new Emacs process. This frees your current Emacs, so
you can continue working in it. (When you run
texinfo-format-region or texinfo-format-buffer, you cannot
use that Emacs for anything else until the command finishes.)
If a Texinfo file has more than 30,000 bytes,
texinfo-format-buffer automatically creates a tag table
for its Info file; makeinfo always creates a tag table. With
a tag table, Info can jump to new nodes more quickly than it can
otherwise.
In addition, if the Texinfo file contains more than about 70,000
bytes, texinfo-format-buffer and makeinfo split the
large Info file into shorter indirect subfiles of about 50,000
bytes each. Big files are split into smaller files so that Emacs does
not need to make a large buffer to hold the whole of a large Info
file; instead, Emacs allocates just enough memory for the small, split-off
file that is needed at the time. This way, Emacs avoids wasting
memory when you run Info. (Before splitting was implemented, Info
files were always kept short and include files were designed as
a way to create a single, large printed manual out of the smaller Info
files. See section Include Files, for more information. Include files are
still used for very large documents, such as The Emacs Lisp
Reference Manual, in which each chapter is a separate file.)
When a file is split, Info itself makes use of a shortened version of the original file that contains just the tag table and references to the files that were split off. The split-off files are called indirect files.
The split-off files have names that are created by appending `-1',
`-2', `-3' and so on to the file name specified by the
@setfilename command. The shortened version of the original file
continues to have the name specified by @setfilename.
At one stage in writing this document, for example, the Info file was saved as the file `test-texinfo' and that file looked like this:
Info file: test-texinfo, -*-Text-*- produced by texinfo-format-buffer from file: new-texinfo-manual.texinfo ^_ Indirect: test-texinfo-1: 102 test-texinfo-2: 50422 test-texinfo-3: 101300 ^_^L Tag table: (Indirect) Node: overview^?104 Node: info file^?1271 Node: printed manual^?4853 Node: conventions^?6855 ...
(But `test-texinfo' had far more nodes than are shown here.) Each of the split-off, indirect files, `test-texinfo-1', `test-texinfo-2', and `test-texinfo-3', is listed in this file after the line that says `Indirect:'. The tag table is listed after the line that says `Tag table:'.
In the list of indirect files, the number following the file name records the cumulative number of bytes in the preceding indirect files, not counting the file list itself, the tag table, or the permissions text in each file. In the tag table, the number following the node name records the location of the beginning of the node, in bytes from the beginning of the (unsplit) output.
If you are using texinfo-format-buffer to create Info files,
you may want to run the Info-validate command. (The
makeinfo command does such a good job on its own, you do not
need Info-validate.) However, you cannot run the M-x
Info-validate node-checking command on indirect files. For
information on how to prevent files from being split and how to
validate the structure of the nodes, see section Running Info-validate.
As an alternative to the normal Info format output you can use the
`--html' option to generate output in HTML format, for installation
on a web site (for example). In this release, HTML output from
makeinfo is monolithic, splitting the output by chapter or node
is not supported. We hope to implement this feature soon.
The HTML output file is named according to @setfilename, but
with any `.info' extension replaced with `.html'.
Texinfo input marked up with the @ifhtml command will produce
output only with the `--html' option supplied. Input marked up
with the @html is passed literally to the output (suppressing
the normal escaping of input `<', `>' and `&' characters
which have special significance in HTML).
The `--footnote-style' option is currently ignored for HTML output; footnotes are hyperlinked at the end of the output file.
The HTML generated is mostly standard (i.e., HTML 2.0, RFC1866). The
exception is that HTML 3.2 tables are generated from the
@multitable command, but tagged to degrade as well as possible
in browsers without table support. Please report output from an
error-free run of makeinfo which violates the HTML 3.2 DTD as a
bug.
Navigation bars are inserted at the start of nodes, similarly to Info
output. The `--no-headers' option will suppress this if used with
`--no-split'. Header <link> elements in split output can
support info-like navigation with browsers like Lynx and Emacs W3
which implement this HTML 1.0 feature. You still won't normally get
the multi-file regexp and index search facilities provided by Info
readers. Otherwise, hyperlinks are generated from Texinfo commands
where appropriate. `@xref' commands to other documents are
generated assuming the other document is available in HTML form too, and
`.html' is appended to the `@xref' Info file name. This
presumably will often not work.
Info files are usually kept in the `info' directory. You can read Info files using the standalone Info program or the Info reader built into Emacs. (See Info file `info', node `Top', for an introduction to Info.)
For Info to work, the `info' directory must contain a file that serves as a top level directory for the Info system. By convention, this file is called `dir'. (You can find the location of this file within Emacs by typing C-h i to enter Info and then typing C-x C-f to see the pathname to the `info' directory.)
The `dir' file is itself an Info file. It contains the top level menu for all the Info files in the system. The menu looks like this:
* Menu:
* Info: (info). Documentation browsing system.
* Emacs: (emacs). The extensible, self-documenting
text editor.
* Texinfo: (texinfo). With one source file, make
either a printed manual using
TeX or an Info file.
...
Each of these menu entries points to the `Top' node of the Info file that is named in parentheses. (The menu entry does not need to specify the `Top' node, since Info goes to the `Top' node if no node name is mentioned. See section Referring to Other Info Files.)
Thus, the `Info' entry points to the `Top' node of the `info' file and the `Emacs' entry points to the `Top' node of the `emacs' file.
In each of the Info files, the `Up' pointer of the `Top' node refers
back to the dir file. For example, the line for the `Top'
node of the Emacs manual looks like this in Info:
File: emacs Node: Top, Up: (DIR), Next: Distrib
In this case, the `dir' file name is written in upper case letters--it can be written in either upper or lower case. This is not true in general, it is a special case for `dir'.
To add a new Info file to your system, you must write a menu entry to add to the menu in the `dir' file in the `info' directory. For example, if you were adding documentation for GDB, you would write the following new entry:
* GDB: (gdb). The source-level C debugger.
The first part of the menu entry is the menu entry name, followed by a colon. The second part is the name of the Info file, in parentheses, followed by a period. The third part is the description.
The name of an Info file often has a `.info' extension. Thus, the Info file for GDB might be called either `gdb' or `gdb.info'. The Info reader programs automatically try the file name both with and without `.info'(11); so it is better to avoid clutter and not to write `.info' explicitly in the menu entry. For example, the GDB menu entry should use just `gdb' for the file name, not `gdb.info'.
If an Info file is not in the `info' directory, there are three ways to specify its location:
Info-directory-list variable in your personal or site
initialization file.
This variable tells Emacs where to look for `dir' files (the files
must be named `dir'). Emacs merges the files named `dir' from
each of the listed directories. (In Emacs version 18, you can set the
Info-directory variable to the name of only one
directory.)
INFOPATH environment
variable in your `.profile' or `.cshrc' initialization file.
(Only you and others who set this environment variable will be able to
find Info files whose location is specified this way.)
For example, to reach a test file in the `/home/bob/info' directory, you could add an entry like this to the menu in the standard `dir' file:
* Test: (/home/bob/info/info-test). Bob's own test file.
In this case, the absolute file name of the `info-test' file is written as the second part of the menu entry.
Alternatively, you could write the following in your `.emacs' file:
(require 'info)
(setq Info-directory-list
(cons (expand-file-name "/home/bob/info") Info-directory-list))
This tells Emacs to merge the `dir' file from the
`/home/bob/info' directory with the system `dir' file. Info
will list the `/home/bob/info/info-test' file as a menu entry in
the `/home/bob/info/dir' file. Emacs does the merging only
when M-x info is first run, so if you want to set
Info-directory-list in an Emacs session where you've already run
info, you must (setq Info-dir-contents nil) to force Emacs
to recompose the `dir' file.
Finally, you can tell Info where to look by setting the INFOPATH
environment variable in your shell startup file, such as `.cshrc',
`.profile' or `autoexec.bat'. If you use a Bourne-compatible
shell such as sh or bash for your shell command
interpreter, you set the INFOPATH environment variable in the
`.profile' initialization file; but if you use csh or
tcsh, you set the variable in the `.cshrc' initialization
file. On MS-DOS/MS-Windows systems, you must set INFOPATH in
your `autoexec.bat' file or in the Registry. Each type of shell
uses a different syntax.
INFOPATH
variable as follows:
setenv INFOPATH .:~/info:/usr/local/emacs/info
INFOPATH=.:$HOME/info:/usr/local/emacs/info export INFOPATH
set INFOPATH=.;%HOME%/info;c:/usr/local/emacs/info
The `.' indicates the current directory as usual. Emacs uses the
INFOPATH environment variable to initialize the value of Emacs's
own Info-directory-list variable. The stand-alone Info reader
merges any files named `dir' in any directory listed in the
@env{INFOPATH} variable into a single menu presented to you in the node
called `(dir)Top'.
However you set @env{INFOPATH}, if its last character is a
colon(13), this
is replaced by the default (compiled-in) path. This gives you a way to
augment the default path with new directories without having to list all
the standard places. For example (using sh syntax):
INFOPATH=/local/info: export INFOPATH
will search `/local/info' first, then the standard directories. Leading or doubled colons are not treated specially.
When you create your own `dir' file for use with
Info-directory-list or @env{INFOPATH}, it's easiest to start by
copying an existing `dir' file and replace all the text after the
`* Menu:' with your desired entries. That way, the punctuation and
special CTRL-_ characters that Info needs will be present.
When you install an Info file onto your system, you can use the program
install-info to update the Info directory file `dir'.
Normally the makefile for the package runs install-info, just
after copying the Info file into its proper installed location.
In order for the Info file to work with install-info, you should
use the commands @dircategory and
@direntry...@end direntry in the Texinfo source
file. Use @direntry to specify the menu entries to add to the
Info directory file, and use @dircategory to specify which part
of the Info directory to put it in. Here is how these commands are used
in this manual:
@dircategory Texinfo documentation system @direntry * Texinfo: (texinfo). The GNU documentation format. * install-info: (texinfo)Invoking install-info. ... ... @end direntry
Here's what this produces in the Info file:
INFO-DIR-SECTION Texinfo documentation system START-INFO-DIR-ENTRY * Texinfo: (texinfo). The GNU documentation format. * install-info: (texinfo)Invoking install-info. ... ... END-INFO-DIR-ENTRY
The install-info program sees these lines in the Info file, and
that is how it knows what to do.
Always use the @direntry and @dircategory commands near
the beginning of the Texinfo input, before the first @node
command. If you use them later on in the input, install-info
will not notice them.
If you use @dircategory more than once in the Texinfo source,
each usage specifies the `current' category; any subsequent
@direntry commands will add to that category.
Here are some recommended @dircategory categories: `GNU
packages', `GNU programming tools', `GNU programming documentation',
`GNU Emacs Lisp', `GNU libraries', `Linux', `TeX', `Individual
utilities'. The idea is to include the `invoking' node for every
program installed by a package under `Individual utilities', and an
entry for the manual as a whole in the appropriate other category.
install-info inserts menu entries from an Info file into the
top-level `dir' file in the Info system (see the previous sections
for an explanation of how the `dir' file works). It's most often
run as part of software installation, or when constructing a `dir' file
for all manuals on a system. Synopsis:
install-info [option]... [info-file [dir-file]]
If info-file or dir-file are not specified, the options
(described below) that define them must be. There are no compile-time
defaults, and standard input is never used. install-info can
read only one Info file and write only one `dir' file per invocation.
If dir-file (however specified) does not exist,
install-info creates it if possible (with no entries).
If any input file is compressed with gzip (see section `Invoking gzip' in Gzip), install-info automatically uncompresses it
for reading. And if dir-file is compressed, install-info
also automatically leaves it compressed after writing any changes.
If dir-file itself does not exist, install-info tries to
open `dir-file.gz'.
Options:
--delete
--dir-file=name
-d name
--entry=text
-e text
--help
-h
--info-file=file
-i file
--info-dir=dir
-D dir
--item=text
--quiet
--remove
-r
--section=sec
-s sec
--version
-V
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