$Id: README,v 1.9 2002/10/21 13:48:40 karl Exp $
This is the README file for the GNU Texinfo distribution.

  Copyright (C) 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000,
  2001, 2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

  Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification,
  are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright
  notice and this notice are preserved.

See ./INSTALL* for installation instructions.

Primary distribution point: ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/texinfo/
  (list of mirrors at: http://www.gnu.org/prep/ftp.html)

Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/
  (list of mirrors at: http://www.gnu.org/server/list-mirrors.html)

Mailing lists:
- bug-texinfo@gnu.org for bug reports or enhancement suggestions:
  http://mail.gnu.org/pipermail/bug-texinfo
- help-texinfo@gnu.org for authoring questions and general discussion:
  http://mail.gnu.org/pipermail/help-texinfo
- texinfo-pretest@texinfo.org for pretests of new releases:
  ftp://ftp.texinfo.org/texinfo/texinfo-pretest-archive/
There are no corresponding newsgroups.

Bug reports:
 please include enough information for the maintainers to reproduce the
 problem.  Generally speaking, that means:
- the contents of any input files necessary to reproduce the bug (crucial!).
- a description of the problem and any samples of the erroneous output.
- the version number of Texinfo and the program(s) involved (use --version).
- hardware, operating system, and compiler versions (uname -a).
- any unusual options you gave to configure (see config.status).
- anything else that you think would be helpful.

Patches are most welcome; if possible, please make them with diff -c and
include ChangeLog entries.

When sending email, please do not encode or split the messages in any
way if at all possible; it's easier to deal with one large message than
many small ones.  GNU shar is a convenient way of packaging multiple
and/or binary files for email.

If you would like to contribute to the GNU project by implementing
additional documentation output formats for Texinfo, that would be
great.  But please do not write a separate translator texi2foo for your
favorite format foo!  That is the hard way to do the job, and makes
extra work in subsequent maintenance, since the Texinfo language is
continually being enhanced and updated.  Instead, the best approach is
modify Makeinfo to generate the new format, as it does now for Info,
HTML, XML, and DocBook.

If you want to convert from DocBook to Texinfo, please see 
http://docbook2X.sourceforge.net/.


The development sources for Texinfo is available through anonymous cvs
at Savannah, see
  http://savannah.gnu.org/cvs/?group=texinfo

This distribution includes the following files, among others:
    README                      This file.

    NEWS                        Summary of new features by release.

    INTRODUCTION                Brief introduction to the system, and
                                how to create readable files from the
                                Texinfo source files in this distribution.

Texinfo source files (in ./doc):
    texinfo.txi                 Describes the Texinfo language and many
                                of the associated tools.  It tells how
                                to use Texinfo to write documentation,
                                how to use Texinfo mode in GNU Emacs,
                                TeX, makeinfo, and the Emacs Lisp
                                Texinfo formatting commands.

    info.texi                   This manual tells you how to use 
                                Info.  This document comes as part of
                                GNU Emacs.  If you do not have Emacs,
                                you can format this Texinfo source
                                file with makeinfo or TeX and then
                                read the resulting Info file with the
                                standalone Info reader that is part of
                                this distribution.

    info-stnd.texi              This manual tells you how to use
                                the standalone GNU Info reader that is
                                included in this distribution as C
                                source (./info).

Printing related files:
    doc/texinfo.tex             This TeX definitions file tells
                                the TeX program how to typeset a
                                Texinfo file into a DVI file ready for
                                printing.

    util/texindex.c             This file contains the source for
                                the `texindex' program that generates
                                sorted indices used by TeX when
                                typesetting a file for printing.

    util/texi2dvi               This is a shell script for
                                producing an indexed DVI file using
                                TeX and texindex. 


Source files for standalone C programs: 
  ./lib
  ./makeinfo
  ./info


Installation files:
    Makefile.am                 What Automake uses to make a Makefile.in.

    configure.ac		What Autoconf uses to create `configure'.

    Makefile.in                 What `configure' uses to make a Makefile.
                                Created by Automake.
                               
    configure                   Configuration script for local conditions.
                                Created by Autoconf.



Developer information:

This distribution uses automake 1.7.1 and autoconf 2.54.  If you are
getting the Texinfo sources from cvs, or change the Texinfo
configure.ac, you'll need to have these tools installed to (re)build.
Sometimes patches to them are necessary for Texinfo; such patches will
be in the ./util subdirectory if they exist.

Here's the order in which to run the tools for a fresh build:
  autoheader   # creates config.in, not necessarily needed every time
  aclocal      # for a new version of automake
  automake
  autoconf
  configure CFLAGS=-g
  make

(with arguments to taste, of course.)  Or you can run autoreconf -fvi
instead of the various auto* tools.

If you want to rebuild the man pages and other generated files, set
the environment variable TEXINFO_MAINT.  You'll need help2man installed.
