texinfo: Printed Books

Overview

Formatting Commands

Info Files

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1.7 Printed Books
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A Texinfo file can be formatted and typeset as a printed book or manual.
To do this, you need TeX, a sophisticated typesetting program written by
Donald Knuth of Stanford University.

  A Texinfo-based book is similar to any other typeset, printed work: it
can have a title page, copyright page, table of contents, and preface,
as well as chapters, numbered or unnumbered sections and subsections,
page headers, cross references, footnotes, and indices.

  TeX is a general purpose typesetting program.  Texinfo provides a file
'texinfo.tex' that contains information (definitions or "macros") that
TeX uses when it typesets a Texinfo file.  ('texinfo.tex' tells TeX how
to convert the Texinfo @-commands to TeX commands, which TeX can then
process to create the typeset document.)  'texinfo.tex' contains the
specifications for printing a document.  You can get the latest version
of 'texinfo.tex' from the Texinfo home page,
<http://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/>.

  In the United States, documents are most often printed on 8.5 inch by
11 inch pages (216mm by 280mm); this is the default size.  But you can
also print for 7 inch by 9.25 inch pages (178mm by 235mm, the
'@smallbook' size; or on A4 or A5 size paper ('@afourpaper',
'@afivepaper').  Note: @smallbook, and Note: A4 Paper.

  TeX is freely distributable.  It is written in a superset of Pascal
for literate programming called WEB and can be compiled either in Pascal
or (by using a conversion program that comes with the TeX distribution)
in C.

  TeX is very powerful and has a great many features.  Because a Texinfo
file must be able to present information both on a character-only
terminal in Info form and in a typeset book, the formatting commands
that Texinfo supports are necessarily limited.

  Note: Obtaining TeX, for information on acquiring TeX.  It is not
part of the Texinfo distribution.