Texinfo - GNU Documentation System - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF)

Texinfo - The GNU Documentation System

Texinfo is the official documentation format of the GNU project. It was invented by Richard Stallman and Bob Chassell many years ago, loosely based on Brian Reid's Scribe and other formatting languages of the time. It is used by many non-GNU projects as well.

Texinfo uses a single source file to produce output in a number of formats, both online and printed (dvi, html, info, pdf, xml, etc.). This means that instead of writing different documents for online information and another for a printed manual, you need write only one document. And when the work is revised, you need revise only that one document. The Texinfo system is well-integrated with GNU Emacs.

Help wanted: I would be very grateful for help maintaining Texinfo. Standalone Info in particular could be maintained more or less independently of the other programs. I also have a long list of bug reports and feature requests for makeinfo, the Texinfo language, etc. For an overview of some of them, see the TODO file in the distribution. Please write me if you can help.

Basics

Download the latest official release as a gzipped tar file (also on all GNU mirrors). Or browse the unpacked release (also on all CTAN mirrors).
The Texinfo manual, Info manual, and standalone Info reader manual from the latest official release, in various formats.
The latest texinfo.tex macro file used for converting Texinfo source to DVI or PDF files for printing and viewing, using the TeX typesetting system. The latest texinfo.tex is also available via the Savannah gnulib project and tug.org, also gzip-compressed and bzip2-compressed. (texinfo.tex is updated much more frequently than full Texinfo releases are made; please use the latest version.)
If available, the latest pretest by ftp (alternate location via http). Pretests are inherently unstable, may not work, etc.
The development sources via CVS, from savannah.gnu.org.
Old releases, for historical and archeological purposes.
The NEWS file listing notable changes by release, the ChangeLog file detailing all changes, and the TODO file with future projects large and small, awaiting volunteers.

Mailing lists

bug-texinfo@gnu.org: The main address for bug reporting and developer discussion (web archive, plain text archive).
help-texinfo@gnu.org: For Texinfo authoring help and discussion (archive, plain text archive).
texinfo-pretest@texinfo.org: To discuss the latest test releases and development issues (archive).
texinfo-cvs@texinfo.org: To get mail with every CVS commit to the repository (archive).

Anyone is welcome to subscribe to any or all of these. Do so by sending a message to the corresponding -request address, for example bug-texinfo-request@gnu.org. A single line

subscribe yourusername@yourdomain.dom

in both the body and the subject works best. The plain text archives may be especially useful for Texinfo, since the web archiver considers many Texinfo @-commands as email addresses and therefore mangles them.

More Texinfo

Documentation:

The official GNU documentation page contains much more information about Texinfo and GNU manuals.
You can search all GNU documentation (among other interesting things).
An introductory article written by Arnold Robbins.
Other Texinfo converters, a page maintained by kama.

Programs:

a2ps, for generating printable files from plain text, has a Texinfo style option.
docbook2x, conversion from Docbook to Texinfo.
gdoc, for extracting Texinfo (and other format) documentation from source files.
help2man, for generating good man pages from --help output.
ltxindex, for typesetting indices of LaTeX documents with Texinfo's texindex program.
man2texi, generate Texinfo from man pages.
my-bib-macros.texi, a start at bibliography support via Texinfo macros. For a start at integration with BibTeX, see the Web2C manual sources.
pinfo, a curses-based Info reader with color support and a lynx-like interface.
sgmltexi, Texinfo authoring via SGML tools.
Scheme Scribe, which can convert Texinfo to Scribe and generate Info files.
texi2html, an (actively maintained) alternative translator for generating HTML, roff, and chm.
texi2latex, converting Texinfo to LaTeX via XML.
texi2roff, an old standalone program that converts to troff format; it is not maintained and not up to date.
tkinfo, a Tk-based Info reader.

If you know of free software or documentation that would be useful to add here, please email bug-texinfo@gnu.org.

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Please send comments on GNU web pages in general to webmasters@www.gnu.org (and bug-texinfo@gnu.org for this page in particular), and send other FSF & GNU questions and inquiries to gnu@gnu.org. Other ways to contact the FSF.

Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.

Updated: $Date: 2005/04/15 16:14:33 $ $Author: karl $