This is the README file for the GNU Texinfo distribution.
The primary distribution point is ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/texinfo/.
Mailing lists:
- bug-texinfo@gnu.org for bug reports or enhancement suggestions,
archived at ftp://ftp-mailing-list-archives.gnu.org/.
- help-texinfo@gnu.org for authoring questions and general discussion.
archived at the same place.
- texinfo-pretest@tug.org for pretests of new releases,
archived at http://tug.org/archives/texinfo-pretest/.
There are as yet no corresponding newsgroups.
For bug reports, please include enough information for the maintainers
to reproduce the problem. Generally speaking, that means:
- the version number of Texinfo and the program(s) involved (use --version).
- hardware, operating system, and compiler versions (uname -a).
- any unusual options you gave to configure (see config.status).
- the contents of any input files necessary to reproduce the bug (crucial!).
- a description of the problem and any samples of the erroneous output.
- anything else that you think would be helpful.
Patches are most welcome; if possible, please make them with diff -c and
include ChangeLog entries.
When sending email, please do not encode or split the messages in any
way if at all possible; it's much easier to deal with one large message
than many small ones. GNU shar is a convenient way of packaging
multiple and/or binary files for email.
For generic installation instructions on compiling and installing this
Automake-based distribution, please read the file `INSTALL'.
Installation notes specific to Texinfo:
* The Info tree uses a file `dir' as its root node; the `dir-example'
file in this distribution is included as a possible starting point.
Use it, modify it, or ignore it just as you like.
* You can create a file texinfo.cnf to be read by TeX when
processing Texinfo manuals. For example, you might like to use
@afourpaper by default. See the `Preparing for TeX' node in
texinfo.txi for more details. You don't have to create the file if
you have nothing to put in it.
* If your info files are not in $prefix/info, you may wish to add a line
#define DEFAULT_INFOPATH "/mydir1:/mydir2:..."
to config.h after running configure.
* For instructions on compiling this distribution with DJGPP tools
for MS-DOS and MS-Windows, please see the file djgpp/README.
If you would like to contribute to the GNU project by implementing
additional documentation output formats for Texinfo, that would be
great. 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 and HTML.
This distribution includes the following files, among others:
README This file.
NEWS Summary of new features by release.
INTRODUCTION Brief introduction to the system, and
how to create readable files from the
Texinfo source files in this distribution.
Texinfo source files (in ./doc):
texinfo.txi Describes the Texinfo language and many
of the associated tools. It tells how
to use Texinfo to write documentation,
how to use Texinfo mode in GNU Emacs,
TeX, makeinfo, and the Emacs Lisp
Texinfo formatting commands.
info.texi This manual tells you how to use
Info. This document comes as part of
GNU Emacs. If you do not have Emacs,
you can format this Texinfo source
file with makeinfo or TeX and then
read the resulting Info file with the
standalone Info reader that is part of
this distribution.
info-stnd.texi This manual tells you how to use
the standalone GNU Info reader that is
included in this distribution as C
source (./info).
Printing related files:
doc/texinfo.tex This TeX definitions file tells
the TeX program how to typeset a
Texinfo file into a DVI file ready for
printing.
util/texindex.c This file contains the source for
the `texindex' program that generates
sorted indices used by TeX when
typesetting a file for printing.
util/texi2dvi This is a shell script for
producing an indexed DVI file using
TeX and texindex.
Source files for standalone C programs (./lib, ./makeinfo, ./info):
makeinfo/makeinfo.c This file contains the source for
the `makeinfo' program that you can
use to create an Info file from a
Texinfo file.
info/info.c This file contains the source for
the `info' program that you can use to
view Info files on an ASCII terminal.
Installation files:
configure This file creates creates a Makefile
which in turn creates an `info' or
`makeinfo' executable, or a C sources
distribution.
configure.in This is a template for creating
`configure' using Autoconf.
Makefile.in This is a template for `configure'
to use to make a Makefile. Created by
Automake.
Makefile.am This is a template for Automake
to use to make a Makefile.in.
Other files:
fixfonts This is a shell script to install the
`lcircle10' TeX fonts as an alias for
the `circle10' fonts. In some older
TeX distributions the names are
different.
tex3patch This handles a bug for version
3.0 of TeX that does not occur in
more recent versions.