Using Texinfo
=============

  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, on-line Info file with nodes, menus, cross references, and
indices.  You can, if you wish, make the chapters and sections of the
printed document correspond to the nodes of the on-line information;
and you use the same cross references and indices for both the Info
file and the printed work.  `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.  This creates a DVI file that you can typeset
and print as a book or report.  (Note that the Texinfo language is
completely different from TeX's usual language, plain TeX.)  If you do
not have TeX, but do have `troff' or `nroff', you can use the
`texi2roff' program instead.

  To make an Info file, you process a Texinfo source file with the
`makeinfo' utility or Emacs's `texinfo-format-buffer' command; this
creates an Info file that you can install on-line.

  TeX and `texi2roff' work with many types of printer; similarly, Info
works with almost every type of computer terminal.  This power makes
Texinfo a general purpose system, but brings with it a constraint,
which is that a Texinfo file may contain only the customary
"typewriter" characters (letters, numbers, spaces, and punctuation
marks) but no special graphics.

  A Texinfo 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 become familiar with
the Info documentation reading program and learn about nodes, menus,
cross references, and the rest.  (information.)

  You can use Texinfo to create both on-line help and printed manuals;
moreover, Texinfo is freely redistributable.  For these reasons, Texinfo
is the format in which documentation for GNU utilities and libraries is
written.