Node:Using Texinfo, Next:Info Files, Previous:Reporting Bugs, Up:Overview
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. The GNU Emacs Manual is a good example of a Texinfo file, as is this manual.
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 Hardcopy).
To output an Info file, process your Texinfo source with the
makeinfo utility or Emacs's texinfo-format-buffer command.
You can install the result in your Info tree (see Installing an Info File).
To output an HTML file, run makeinfo --html on your Texinfo
source. You can (for example) install the result on your web site.
To output an XML file, run makeinfo --xml on your Texinfo source.
To output DocBook (a particular form of XML), run makeinfo
--docbook. If you want to convert from Docbook to Texinfo,
please see http://docbook2X.sourceforge.net/.
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 makeinfo to generate the new format, as it does now for
Info, plain text, HTML, XML, and DocBook.
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.
A Texinfo source file is a plain ASCII file containing text and
@-commands (words preceded by an @) 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 Texinfo Mode.)
Before writing a Texinfo source file, you should learn about nodes, menus, cross references, and the rest, for example by reading this manual.
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 GNU documentation web page.
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 makeinfo 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.
Man pages still have their place, and if you wish to support them, the
program help2man may be useful; it generates a traditional man
page from the --help 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
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/help2man/.