20.4 texi2any Printed Output

To justify the name Texinfo-to-any, texi2any has basic support for creating printed output in the various formats: TeX DVI, PDF, and PostScript. This is done via the simple method of executing the texi2dvi program when those output formats are requested, after checking the validity of the input to give users the benefit of texi2any’s error checking. If you don’t want such error checking, perhaps because your manual plays advanced TeX tricks together with texinfo.tex, just invoke texi2dvi directly.

The output format options for this are --dvi, --dvipdf, --pdf, and --ps. See Format with texi2dvi, for more details on these options and general texi2dvi operation. In addition, the --verbose, --silent, and --quiet options are passed on if specified; the -I and -o options are likewise passed on with their arguments, and --debug without its argument.

The only option remaining that is related to the texi2dvi invocation is --Xopt. Here, just the argument is passed on and multiple --Xopt options accumulate. This provides a way to construct an arbitrary command line for texi2dvi. For example, running

texi2any --Xopt -t --Xopt @a4paper --pdf foo.texi

is equivalent to running

texi2dvi -t @a4paper --pdf foo.texi

except for the validity check.

Although one might wish that other options to texi2any would take effect, they don’t. For example, running ‘texi2any --no-number-sections --dvi foo.texi’ still results in a DVI file with numbered sections. (Perhaps this could be improved in the future, if requests are received.)

The actual name of the command that is invoked is specified by the TEXI2DVI customization variable (see Other Customization Variables). As you might guess, the default is ‘texi2dvi’.

texi2any itself does not generate any normal output when it invokes texi2dvi, only diagnostic messages.