texinfo: Output Formats

Overview

Adding Output Formats

Using Texinfo

Back to Software Index

1.3 Output Formats
==================

Here is a brief overview of the output formats currently supported by
Texinfo.

Info
     (Generated via 'makeinfo'.)  Info format is mostly a plain text
     transliteration of the Texinfo source.  It adds a few control
     characters to separate nodes and provide navigational information
     for menus, cross references, indices, and so on.  The Emacs Info
     subsystem (Note: (info)Top), and the standalone 'info' program
     (Note: (info-stnd)Top), among others, can read these files.
     Note: Info Files, and Note: Creating and Installing Info Files.

Plain text
     (Generated via 'makeinfo --plaintext'.)  This is almost the same as
     Info output with the navigational control characters are omitted.

HTML
     (Generated via 'makeinfo --html'.)  HTML, standing for Hyper Text
     Markup Language, has become the most commonly used language for
     writing documents on the World Wide Web.  Web browsers, such as
     Mozilla, Lynx, and Emacs-W3, can render this language online.
     There are many versions of HTML; 'makeinfo' tries to use a subset
     of the language that can be interpreted by any common browser.  For
     details of the HTML language and much related information, see
     <http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/>.  Note: Generating HTML.

DVI
     (Generated via 'texi2dvi'.)  The DeVIce Independent binary format
     is output by the TeX typesetting program (<http://tug.org>).  This
     is then read by a DVI 'driver', which knows the actual
     device-specific commands that can be viewed or printed, notably
     Dvips for translation to PostScript (Note: (dvips)Top) and Xdvi
     for viewing on an X display
     (<http://sourceforge.net/projects/xdvi/>).  Note: Hardcopy.  (Be
     aware that the Texinfo language is very different from and much
     stricter than TeX's usual languages: plain TeX, LaTeX, ConTeXt,
     etc.)

PostScript
     (Generated via 'texi2dvi --ps'.)  PostScript is a page description
     language that became widely used around 1985 and is still used
     today.  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostScript> gives a basic
     description and more preferences.  By default, Texinfo uses the
     'dvips' program to convert TeX's DVI output to PostScript.  Note:
     (dvips)Top.

PDF
     (Generated via 'texi2dvi --pdf' or 'texi2pdf'.)  This format was
     developed by Adobe Systems for portable document interchange, based
     on their previous PostScript language.  It can represent the exact
     appearance of a document, including fonts and graphics, and
     supporting arbitrary scaling.  It is intended to be
     platform-independent and easily viewable, among other design goals;
     <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Document_Format> and
     <http://tug.org/TUGboat/tb22-3/tb72beebe-pdf.pdf> have some
     background.  By default, Texinfo uses the 'pdftex' program, a
     variant of TeX, to output PDF; see
     <http://tug.org/applications/pdftex>.  Note: PDF Output.

Docbook
     (Generated via 'makeinfo --docbook'.)  This is an XML-based format
     developed some years ago, primarily for technical documentation.
     It therefore bears some resemblance, in broad outline, to Texinfo.
     See <http://www.docbook.org>.  Various converters from Docbook _to_
     Texinfo have also been developed; see the Texinfo web pages.

XML
     (Generated via 'makeinfo --xml'.)  XML is a generic syntax
     specification usable for any sort of content (a reference is at
     <http://www.w3.org/XML>).  The 'makeinfo' XML output, unlike all
     the other output formats, is a transliteration of the Texinfo
     source rather than processed output.  That is, it translates the
     Texinfo markup commands into XML syntax, for further processing by
     XML tools.  The details of the output are defined in an XML DTD as
     usual, which is contained in a file 'texinfo.dtd' included in the
     Texinfo source distribution and available via the Texinfo web
     pages.  The XML contains enough information to recreate the
     original content, except for syntactic constructs such as Texinfo
     macros and conditionals.  The Texinfo source distribution includes
     a utility script 'txixml2texi' to do that backward transformation.