Texinfo
Texinfo is the hypertext-capable documentation system of the GNU project .
motivation
Only one source document needs to be maintained, from which various output formats can be generated with conversion programs.
Input format
A Texinfo source file usually has the file extension .texi and looks almost like normal text ( plain text ), but contains formatting instructions that start with the brackets (@):
@ifnottex @node Top @top Short Sample
@insertcopying @end ifnottex
@menu
* First Chapter:: The first chapter is the
only chapter in this sample.
* Index:: Complete index.
@end menu
Output formats
- With texi2any (before Texinfo 5.0 makeinfo and texi2html )
- With texi2dvi / texi2pdf
- With makertf
A conversion from texinfo to UNIX manpages is not available. Man pages must be structured according to a fixed scheme and do not allow hyperlinks .
texi2dvi and texi2pdf are shell scripts which in turn use TeX (or pdfTeX ). A TeX format, which is also called texinfo, is used here.
texinfo as TeX format
texinfo is an unusual TeX format because it does not follow the conventions of plain TeX . In particular, the escape character that introduces the commands is not the backslash, but the at sign .
info
Info is the hypertext documentation format of the GNU project. Info files can be navigated with GNU Info or Emacs (even on ASCII terminals ).
License
texinfo is free software under the GNU General Public License
