17: How do I install a piece of Texinfo documentation?
First, you must turn the Texinfo files into Info files. You may do this
within Emacs, using "M-x texinfo-format-buffer", or with the stand-alone
"makeinfo" program, available as part of the latest Texinfo package at
ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu/texinfo-3.1.tar.gz
and all prep mirrors (see question 89 for a list).
For information about the Texinfo format, read the Texinfo manual which
comes with Emacs. This manual also comes installed in Info format, so
you can read it on-line.
Neither texinfo-format-buffer nor makeinfo installs the resulting Info
files in Emacs's Info tree. To install Info files:
1. Move the files to the "info" directory in the installed Emacs
distribution. see question 4 if you don't know where that is.
2. Edit the file info/dir in the installed Emacs distribution, and add a
line for the top level node in the Info package that you are
installing. Follow the examples already in this file. The format is:
* Topic: (relative-pathname). Short description of topic.
If you want to install Info files and you don't have the necessary
privileges, you have several options:
* Info files don't actually need to be installed before being used. You
can feed a file name to the Info-goto-node command (invoked by pressing
`g' in Info mode) by typing the name of the file in parentheses. This
goes to the node named "Top" in that file. For example, to view a Info
file named "XXX" in your home directory, you can type this:
C-h i g (~/XXX) RET
* You can create your own Info directory. You can tell Emacs where the
Info directory is by adding its pathname to the value of the variable
Info-default-directory-list. For example, to use a private Info
directory which is a subdirectory of your home directory named "Info",
you could put this in your .emacs file:
(setq Info-default-directory-list
(cons "~/Info" Info-default-directory-list))
You will need a top-level Info file named "dir" in this directory which
has everything the system dir file has in it, except it should list
only entries for Info files in that directory. You might not need it
if all files in this directory were referenced by other "dir" files.
The node lists from all dir files in Info-default-directory-list are
merged by the Info system.