texinfo: Info Format Indirect Tag Table

Info Format General Layout

Info Format Tag Table

Info Format Preamble

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Info Format: Indirect Tag Table
-------------------------------

The indirect table is written to the main file in the case of split
output only.  It specifies the starting byte position of each split
output file (as a decimal integer):

         <indirect table> =
     ^_
     Indirect:
     (<filename>: <bytepos>)*

  The number of preamble bytes written to each output file is included
in the positions.  Neither the preamble nor the size of the top-level
output file is included.

  The first actual node of content will be pointed to by the first
entry.

  Unfortunately, Info-creating programs such as 'makeinfo' have not
always implemented these rules perfectly, due to various bugs and
oversights.  Therefore, robust Info viewers should fall back to
searching "nearby" the given position for a node, instead of just giving
up if the position is not perfectly at a node beginning.

  As an example, suppose split output is generated for the GDB manual.
The top-level file 'gdb.info' will contain something like this:

     ^_
     Indirect:
     gdb.info-1: 1878
     gdb.info-2: 295733
     ...

  This tells Info viewers that the first node of the manual occurs at
byte 1878 (i.e., after the preamble) of the file 'gdb.info-1'.  The
first node written to 'gdb.info-2' would start at byte 295733 if the
subsequent 'gdb.info-*' files (not including 'gdb.info' files were
appended to 'gdb.info-1', including their preambles.