Texinfo - The GNU Documentation System
(no gifs due to patent problems)
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:
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.
Return to GNU's home page.
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.
Copyright (C) 2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111, USA
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 $