Writing Manuals with Texinfo in Emacs

• The “Hands On Guile Scheme for Beginners” course is a little over a week away!

  https://systemcrafters.net/courses/hands-on-guile-scheme-beginners/

  The next iteration should happen in March or April, sign up for the newsletter to be notified!

  https://systemcrafters.net/newsletter/

  Also, feel free to send me an e-mail directly if you’re interested or have questions about it.

• Check out Sacha Chua’s next live stream!

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x81McHcnUMs

• Gavin Freeborn has a new video out about Emacs:

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oeE52bIFyE

• Learn a bit about Texinfo
• Start writing an example book or manual
• Attempt to export the manual to different formats (HTML, PDF, ePUB, .info)
• Take a look at Org Mode’s Texinfo export backend

In Guix, run this command to enter a shell that makes it easy to run Texinfo!

guix shell texinfo texlive-scheme-small texlive-texinfo

Add this to your Emacs configuration to automatically load .info files in the Info viewer:

;; Load the info system for info files
(add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("\\.info\\'" . Info-on-current-buffer))

Alternatively, you can use the C-u C-h i key binding to be prompted for an info file to load. (Or C-u M-x info)

makeinfo -D 'VERSION 6.6.6' -D 'UPDATED Jan 26, 2024' mymanual.texinfo
makeinfo --html --no-split mymanual.texinfo
makeinfo --pdf mymanual.texinfo

#+begin_src texinfo

\input texinfo @settitle Sample Manual 1.0

@copying This is a short example of a complete Texinfo file.

Copyright @copyright{} 2016 Free Software Foundation, Inc. @end copying

@titlepage @title Sample Title @page @vskip 0pt plus 1filll @insertcopying @end titlepage

@contents

@node Top @top System Crafters IRC Manual

This manual is for System Crafters IRC (version @value{VERSION}, @value{UPDATED}).

@menu

@end menu

@node How to Join @chapter How to Join

@cindex chapter, first @cindex index entry, another @findex hello-world This is the first chapter.

Here is a numbered list.

@enumerate @item This is the first item.

@item This is the second item. @end enumerate

@node First Section @section First Section

First section of first chapter.

@node Second Section @section Second Section

Second section of first chapter.

@node Clients to Use @chapter Clients to Use

@lisp (use-modules (guix inferior) (guix channels) (srfi srfi-1)) ;for ’first’

(define channels ;; This is the old revision from which we want to ;; extract guile-json. (list (channel (name ’guix) (url “https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/guix.git”) (commit “65956ad3526ba09e1f7a40722c96c6ef7c0936fe”))))

(define inferior ;; An inferior representing the above revision. (inferior-for-channels channels))

;; Now create a manifest with the current “guile” package ;; and the old “guile-json” package. (packages->manifest (list (first (lookup-inferior-packages inferior “guile-json”)) (specification->package “guile”))) @end lisp

@node Concept Index @unnumbered Concept Index

@printindex cp

@node Programming Index @unnumbered Programming Index @printindex fn

@bye

#+end_src