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Info Command

The info command is part of the Texinfo documentation system, which is the documentation system used by the GNU Project. It uses a single source file to produce both on-line help (and other information) and a printed manual. This means that instead of writing two different documents, one providing on-line information and the other for a printed manual, you need write only one complete document.

Most Texinfo documents are intended to be both a reference manual (like the man command in UNIX) and a tutorial. The on-line version of the manual is referred to as an info file, there are several programs available to read them. Currently, the only local machine with up-to-date info files is `rigel'.

There are several commands that allow you to read info-files:

• If you are on an ASCII terminal with some screen addressability (i.e. vi works properly), there is a program called info.
• If you are on an Xterminal, you can use the program xinfo.
• If you are an Emacs user, there is an info reader built into Emacs; just type M-? i (or M-x info).

With all of these info readers, typing ? will give a listing of available commands. The commands are very similar among all three of these. Typing h will bring up a simple tutorial to show you how to use the info readers.

The entire Info system is organized in an hierarchal fashion, with information at each node. At each level there is a menu of the sub-topics available. At the top level is a listing of the documents available, at the next level down you can select chapters, etc. You can select a menu entry with the m command followed by the name of the node you wish to visit.

The info system also allows you to follow cross references. To do this, use the f command followed by the name of cross reference node.

In either of these cases, you do not need to type a complete nodename; if you type a few letters and then a space or tab, info will will try to fill in the rest of the nodename. If you ask for further completion without typing any more characters you'll be given a list of possibilities; you can also get the list with ?. If you type a few characters and then hit return info will try to do a completion, and if it is ambiguous use the first possibility.

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