/usr/share/doc/texinfo/html/Conventions.html

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<a name="Conventions"></a>
<div class="header">
<p>
Next: <a href="Comments.html#Comments" accesskey="n" rel="next">Comments</a>, Up: <a href="Writing-a-Texinfo-File.html#Writing-a-Texinfo-File" accesskey="u" rel="up">Writing a Texinfo File</a> &nbsp; [<a href="index.html#SEC_Contents" title="Table of contents" rel="contents">Contents</a>][<a href="Command-and-Variable-Index.html#Command-and-Variable-Index" title="Index" rel="index">Index</a>]</p>
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<hr>
<a name="General-Syntactic-Conventions"></a>
<h3 class="section">2.1 General Syntactic Conventions</h3>
<a name="index-General-syntactic-conventions"></a>
<a name="index-Syntactic-conventions"></a>
<a name="index-Conventions_002c-syntactic"></a>
<a name="index-Characters_002c-basic-input"></a>
<a name="Formatting-Commands"></a>
<p>This section describes the general conventions used in all Texinfo documents.
</p>
<ul>
<li> <a name="index-Source-files_002c-characters-used"></a>
All printable ASCII characters except &lsquo;<samp>@</samp>&rsquo;, &lsquo;<samp>{</samp>&rsquo; and
&lsquo;<samp>}</samp>&rsquo; can appear in a Texinfo file and stand for themselves.
&lsquo;<samp>@</samp>&rsquo; is the escape character which introduces commands, while
&lsquo;<samp>{</samp>&rsquo; and &lsquo;<samp>}</samp>&rsquo; are used to surround arguments to certain
commands.  To put one of these special characters into the document, put
an &lsquo;<samp>@</samp>&rsquo; character in front of it, like this: &lsquo;<samp>@@</samp>&rsquo;,
&lsquo;<samp>@{</samp>&rsquo;, and &lsquo;<samp>@}</samp>&rsquo;.

</li><li> <a name="index-_0040_002dcommands"></a>
<a name="index-Formatting-commands"></a>
In a Texinfo file, the commands you write to describe the contents of
the manual are preceded by an &lsquo;<samp>@</samp>&rsquo; character; they are called
<em>@-commands</em>.  (The &lsquo;<samp>@</samp>&rsquo; in Texinfo has the same meaning that
&lsquo;<samp>\</samp>&rsquo; has in plain TeX.)

<a name="index-Braces_002c-when-to-use"></a>
<p>Depending on what they do or what arguments<a name="DOCF1" href="#FOOT1"><sup>1</sup></a> they take, you
need to write @-commands on lines of their own, or as part of
sentences.  As a general rule, a command requires braces if it mingles 
among other text; but it does not need braces if it is on a line of its 
own.  For more details of Texinfo command syntax, see <a href="Command-Syntax.html#Command-Syntax">Command Syntax</a>.
</p>

</li><li> Whitespace following an @-command name is optional and (usually)
ignored if present.  The exceptions are contexts when whitespace is
significant, e.g., an <code>@example</code> environment.


</li><li> Texinfo supports the usual quotation marks used in English and in
other languages; see <a href="Inserting-Quotation-Marks.html#Inserting-Quotation-Marks">Inserting Quotation Marks</a>.

</li><li> <a name="index-Multiple-dashes-in-source"></a>
<a name="index-Dashes-in-source"></a>
<a name="index-Hyphens-in-source_002c-two-or-three-in-a-row"></a>
<a name="index-Em-dash_002c-producing"></a>
<a name="index-En-dash_002c-producing"></a>
Use three hyphens in a row, &lsquo;<samp>---</samp>&rsquo;, to produce a long dash&mdash;like
this (called an <em>em dash</em>), used for punctuation in sentences.
Use two hyphens, &lsquo;<samp>--</samp>&rsquo;, to produce a medium dash (called an
<em>en dash</em>), used primarily for numeric ranges, as in &ldquo;June
25&ndash;26&rdquo;.  Use a single hyphen, &lsquo;<samp>-</samp>&rsquo;, to produce a standard hyphen
used in compound words.  For display on the screen, Info reduces three
hyphens to two and two hyphens to one (not transitively!).  Of course,
any number of hyphens in the source remain as they are in literal
contexts, such as <code>@code</code> and <code>@example</code>.

</li><li> <a name="index-Form-feed-characters"></a>
<a name="index-CTRL_002dl"></a>
Form feed (<kbd>CTRL-l</kbd>) characters in the input are handled as
follows:

<dl compact="compact">
<dt>PDF/DVI</dt>
<dd><p>In normal text, treated as ending any open paragraph; essentially
ignored between paragraphs.
</p>
</dd>
<dt>Info</dt>
<dd><p>Output as-is between paragraphs (their most common use); in other
contexts, they may be treated as regular spaces (and thus consolidated
with surrounding whitespace).
</p>
</dd>
<dt>HTML</dt>
<dd><p>Written as a numeric entity except contexts where spaces are ignored;
for example, in &lsquo;<samp>@footnote{ ^L foo}</samp>&rsquo;, the form feed is
ignored.
</p>
</dd>
<dt>XML</dt>
<dd><p>Keep them everywhere; in attributes, escaped as &lsquo;<samp>\f</samp>&rsquo;; also,
&lsquo;<samp>\</samp>&rsquo; is escaped as &lsquo;<samp>\\</samp>&rsquo; and newline as &lsquo;<samp>\n</samp>&rsquo;.
</p>
</dd>
<dt>Docbook</dt>
<dd><p>Completely removed, as they are not allowed.
</p></dd>
</dl>

<p>As you can see, because of these differing requirements of the output
formats, it&rsquo;s not possible to use form feeds completely portably.
</p>
</li><li> <a name="index-Tabs_003b-don_0027t-use_0021"></a>
<strong>Caution:</strong> Last, do not use tab characters in a Texinfo file!
(Except perhaps in verbatim modes.)  TeX uses variable-width fonts,
which means that it is impractical at best to define a tab to work in
all circumstances.  Consequently, TeX treats tabs like single
spaces, and that is not what they look like in the source.
Furthermore, <code>makeinfo</code> does nothing special with tabs, and thus
a tab character in your input file will usually have a different
appearance in the output.

<p>To avoid this problem, Texinfo mode in GNU Emacs inserts
multiple spaces when you press the <tt class="key">TAB</tt> key.  Also, you can run
<code>untabify</code> in Emacs to convert tabs in a region to multiple
spaces, or use the <code>unexpand</code> command from the shell.
</p></li></ul>


<div class="footnote">
<hr>
<h4 class="footnotes-heading">Footnotes</h4>

<h3><a name="FOOT1" href="#DOCF1">(1)</a></h3>
<p>The word
<em>argument</em> comes from the way it is used in mathematics and does not
refer to a dispute between two people; it refers to the information
presented to the command.  According to the <cite>Oxford English
Dictionary</cite>, the word derives from the Latin for <em>to make clear,
prove</em>; thus it came to mean &lsquo;the evidence offered as proof&rsquo;, which is
to say, &lsquo;the information offered&rsquo;, which led to its mathematical
meaning.  In its other thread of derivation, the word came to mean &lsquo;to
assert in a manner against which others may make counter assertions&rsquo;,
which led to the meaning of &lsquo;argument&rsquo; as a dispute.</p>
</div>
<hr>
<div class="header">
<p>
Next: <a href="Comments.html#Comments" accesskey="n" rel="next">Comments</a>, Up: <a href="Writing-a-Texinfo-File.html#Writing-a-Texinfo-File" accesskey="u" rel="up">Writing a Texinfo File</a> &nbsp; [<a href="index.html#SEC_Contents" title="Table of contents" rel="contents">Contents</a>][<a href="Command-and-Variable-Index.html#Command-and-Variable-Index" title="Index" rel="index">Index</a>]</p>
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