Node:Add, Next:Menus, Previous:Info Search, Up:Advanced Info
To add a new topic to the list in the Info directory, you must:
Usually, the way to create the nodes is with Texinfo (see Overview of Texinfo); this has the advantage that you can also make a printed manual from them. However, if you want to edit an Info file, here is how.
The new node can live in an existing documentation file, or in a new
one. It must have a ^_ character before it (invisible to the
user; this node has one but you cannot see it), and it ends with either
a ^_, a ^L ("formfeed"), or the end of file.1
The ^_ starting a node must be followed by a newline or a
^L newline, after which comes the node's header line. The header
line must give the node's name (by which Info finds it), and state the
names of the Next, Previous, and Up nodes (if there
are any). As you can see, this node's Up node is the node
Top, which points at all the documentation for Info. The
Next node is Menus.
The keywords Node, Next, Previous, and Up may appear in any order, anywhere in the header line, but the recommended order is the one in this sentence. Each keyword must be followed by a colon, spaces and tabs, and then the appropriate name. The name may be terminated with a tab, a comma, or a newline. A space does not end it; node names may contain spaces. The case of letters in the names is insignificant.
A node name has two forms. A node in the current file is named by
what appears after the Node: in that node's first line. For
example, this node's name is Add. A node in another file is
named by (filename)node-within-file, as in
(info)Add for this node. If the file name starts with "./",
then it is relative to the current directory; otherwise, it is
relative starting from the standard directory for Info files of your
site. The name (filename)Top can be abbreviated to just
(filename). By convention, the name Top is used
for the "highest" node in any single file--the node whose Up
points out of the file. The Directory node is (dir), it
points to a file dir which holds a large menu listing all the
Info documents installed on your site. The Top node of a
document file listed in the Directory should have an Up:
(dir) in it.
The node name * is special: it refers to the entire file. Thus, g* shows you the whole current file. The use of the node * is to make it possible to make old-fashioned, unstructured files into nodes of the tree.
The Node: name, in which a node states its own name, must not
contain a file name, since when Info searches for a node, it does not
expect a file name to be there. The Next, Previous and
Up names may contain them. In this node, since the Up
node is in the same file, it was not necessary to use one.
Note that the nodes in this file have a file name in the header line. The file names are ignored by Info, but they serve as comments to help identify the node for the user.
If
you put in a ^L to end a new node, be sure that there is a
^_ after it to start the next one, since ^L cannot
start a node. Also, a nicer way to make a node boundary be a
page boundary as well is to put a ^L right after the
^_.