README
1$Id: README,v 1.16 2004/12/13 13:36:32 karl Exp $
2This is the README file for the GNU Texinfo distribution. Texinfo is
3the preferred documentation format for GNU software.
4
5 Copyright (C) 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000,
6 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
7
8 Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification,
9 are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright
10 notice and this notice are preserved.
11
12See ./INSTALL* for installation instructions.
13
14Primary distribution point: ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/texinfo/
15 (list of mirrors at: http://www.gnu.org/prep/ftp.html)
16
17Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/
18 (list of mirrors at: http://www.gnu.org/server/list-mirrors.html)
19 This page includes links to other Texinfo-related programs.
20
21Mailing lists and archives:
22- bug-texinfo@gnu.org for bug reports or enhancement suggestions,
23 archive: http://mail.gnu.org/pipermail/bug-texinfo
24- help-texinfo@gnu.org for authoring questions and general discussion,
25 archive: http://mail.gnu.org/pipermail/help-texinfo
26- texinfo-pretest@texinfo.org for pretests of new releases,
27 archive: http://texinfo.org/ftp/texinfo-pretest-archive
28There are no corresponding newsgroups.
29
30Bug reports:
31 please include enough information for the maintainers to reproduce the
32 problem. Generally speaking, that means:
33- the contents of any input files necessary to reproduce the bug (crucial!).
34- a description of the problem and any samples of the erroneous output.
35- the version number of Texinfo and the program(s) involved (use --version).
36- hardware, operating system, and compiler versions (uname -a).
37- unusual options you gave to configure, if any (see config.status).
38- anything else that you think would be helpful.
39
40Patches are most welcome; if possible, please make them with diff -c and
41include ChangeLog entries.
42
43When sending email, please do not encode or split the messages in any
44way if at all possible; it's easier to deal with one large message than
45many small ones. GNU shar (http://www.gnu.org/software/sharutils/) is a
46convenient way of packaging multiple and/or binary files for email.
47
48See README.dev for information on the Texinfo development environment --
49any interested parties are welcome. If you're a programmer and wish to
50contribute, this should get you started. And if you're not a
51programmer, you can still make significant contributions by writing test
52cases, checking the documentation against the implementation, etc.
53
54This distribution includes the following files, among others:
55 README This file.
56 README.dev Texinfo developer information.
57
58 INSTALL Texinfo-specific installation notes.
59 NEWS Summary of new features by release.
60 INTRODUCTION Brief introduction to the system, and
61 how to create readable files from the
62 Texinfo source files in this distribution.
63
64Texinfo documentation files (in ./doc):
65 texinfo.txi Describes the Texinfo language and many
66 of the associated tools. It tells how
67 to use Texinfo to write documentation,
68 how to use Texinfo mode in GNU Emacs,
69 TeX, makeinfo, and the Emacs Lisp
70 Texinfo formatting commands.
71
72 info.texi This manual tells you how to use
73 Info. This document also comes as part of
74 GNU Emacs. If you do not have Emacs,
75 you can format this Texinfo source
76 file with makeinfo or TeX and then
77 read the resulting Info file with the
78 standalone Info reader that is part of
79 this distribution.
80
81 info-stnd.texi This manual tells you how to use
82 the standalone GNU Info reader that is
83 included in this distribution as C
84 source (./info).
85
86Printing related files:
87 doc/texinfo.tex This TeX definitions file tells
88 the TeX program how to typeset a
89 Texinfo file into a DVI file ready for
90 printing.
91
92 util/texindex.c This file contains the source for
93 the `texindex' program that generates
94 sorted indices used by TeX when
95 typesetting a file for printing.
96
97 util/texi2dvi This is a shell script for
98 producing an indexed DVI file using
99 TeX and texindex.
100
101Source files for standalone C programs:
102 ./lib
103 ./makeinfo
104 ./info
105
106Installation files:
107 Makefile.am What Automake uses to make a Makefile.in.
108 Makefile.in What `configure' uses to make a Makefile,
109 created by Automake.
110 configure.ac What Autoconf uses to create `configure'.
111 configure Configuration script for local conditions,
112 created by Autoconf.
113
README.dev
1$Id: README.dev,v 1.7 2003/11/24 15:11:06 karl Exp $
2README.dev - Texinfo developer information.
3
4 Copyright (C) 2002, 2003 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
5
6 Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification,
7 are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright
8 notice and this notice are preserved.
9
10The development sources for Texinfo is available through anonymous cvs
11at Savannah, see
12 http://savannah.gnu.org/cvs/?group=texinfo
13
14This distribution uses whatever versions of automake, autoconf, and
15gettext are listed in NEWS; usually the latest ones released. If you
16are getting the Texinfo sources from cvs, or change the Texinfo
17configure.ac, you'll need to have these tools installed to (re)build.
18You'll also need help2man. (All of these are available from
19ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu.)
20
21Here's the order in which to run the tools for a fresh build:
22
23 autoheader # creates config.in, not necessarily needed every time
24 aclocal -I m4 # for a new version of automake
25 automake
26 autoconf
27 configure CFLAGS=-g --enable-maintainer-mode
28 make
29
30(with arguments to taste, of course.) Or you can run
31
32 ./bootstrap
33
34instead of the various auto* tools.
35
36
37One final note: If you would like to contribute to the GNU project by
38implementing additional documentation output formats for Texinfo, that
39would be great. But please do not write a separate translator texi2foo
40for your favorite format foo! That is the hard way to do the job, and
41makes extra work in subsequent maintenance, since the Texinfo language
42is continually being enhanced and updated. Instead, the best approach
43is modify Makeinfo to generate the new format, as it does now for Info,
44HTML, XML, and DocBook.
45