Info Format Regular Nodes

Info Format: Regular Nodes

Regular nodes look like this:

    <node> =
<separator>
File: <fn>, Node: <id1>, (Next: <id2>, )? (Prev: <id3>, )? Up: <id4>

<general text, until the next ^_ or end-of-file>

At least one space or tab must be present after each colon and comma, but any number of spaces are ignored. The <id> node identifiers have following format:

   <id> = (<lparen><infofile><rparen>)?(<del>?<nodename><del>?)?
|  <id> = (<lparen><infofile><rparen>)?(<nodename>)?

This <node> defines <id1> in file <fn>, which is typically either ‘manualname’ or ‘manualname.info’. No parenthesized <infofile> component may appear within <id1>.

Each of the identifiers after Next, Prev and Up refer to nodes or anchors within a file. These pointers normally refer within the same file, but ‘(dir)’ is often used to point to the top-level dir file. If an <infofile> component is used then the node name may be omitted, in which case the node identifier refers to the ‘Top’ node within the referenced file.

The Next and Prev pointers are optional. The Up pointer is technically also optional, although most likely this indicates a mistake in the node structuring. Conventionally, the nodes are arranged to form a tree, but this is not a requirement of the format.

Node names containing periods, commas, colons or parentheses (including @-commands which produce any of these) can confuse Info readers. If it is necessary to refer to a node whose name contains any of these, the <nodename> should be surrounded by a pair of <del> characters. There is support in makeinfo for adding these characters (see INFO_SPECIAL_CHARS_QUOTE); however, we don’t recommend you make use of this support until such time as Info-reading programs that recognize this syntax are common. See Node Line Requirements.

The use of non-ASCII characters in the names of nodes is permitted, but can cause problems in cross-references between nodes in Info files with different character encodings, and also when node names from many different files are listed (for example, with the --apropos option to the standalone Info browser), so we recommend avoiding them whenever feasible. For example, prefer the use of the ASCII apostrophe character (') to Unicode directional quotes.

The <general text> of the node can include the special constructs described next.