Texinfo - Output Formats

Output Formats

In order to make it possible for several documentation output formats to be updated all at once, upon changing the original Texinfo (.texi) source file, several syntax converters are available that can be used to generate transliterations of the Texinfo file into other formats. Most of these are created using the makeinfo program, which is part of the GNU Texinfo distribution.

HTML

(Generated via makeinfo --html.) As HTML is the standard language for documents presented on the World Wide Web, this output format can effectively be used to produce online documentation pages. The manual notes that the makeinfo program attempts to restrict its output files to a certain subset of HTML markup that can be read by as many browsers as possible.

DVI

(Generated via texi2dvi.) The Device independent file format is output by the TeX typesetting system, and can be used for generating device-specific commands that can be viewed or printed; for example, translation to PostScript (ps files).

PDF

(Generated via texi2dvi --pdf or texi2pdf.) Based on the PostScript language, this format was developed by Adobe Systems for portable document interchange. Like the PostScript format, it can represent the exact appearance of a document and supports arbitrary scaling. It is intended to be platform-independent and can be viewed with a large variety of software. Texinfo uses the pdftex program, a variant of TeX, to output PDF.

Docbook

(Generated via makeinfo --docbook.) This is an XML-based mark-up language for technical documentation that bears some resemblance to Texinfo, in broad outlines. It is also possible to convert Docbook files to Texinfo, using the docbook2X program.

XML

(Generated via makeinfo --xml.) For general purposes.

Info

(Generated via makeinfo.) This is a specific format which essentially is a plain text version of the original Texinfo syntax in conjunction with a few control characters to separate nodes and provide navigational elements for menus, cross-references, sections, and so on. The Info format can be viewed with the info program.

Notable is the lack of man as an output format from the standard Texinfo tools. True, Texinfo is used for writing the documentation of GNU software, which typically is used in Unix-like environments such as GNU/Linux, where the traditional format for documentation is man. But the design rationale for the standard Texinfo tools' omission of man as an output format is that man pages have a strict conventional format, used traditionally as quick reference guides, whereas typical Texinfo applications are for tutorials as well as reference manuals. As such, no benefit is seen in expressing Texinfo content in man page format. Moreover, many GNU projects eschew man pages almost completely, referring the reader of the provided man page (which often describes itself as seldom maintained) to the Info document.

However, there are third party products to convert info pages to man pages (e.g. info2man). The benefit is that readers can use man and less/more and do not have to learn the Emacs keybindings for the command-line info program.