Guidelines for writing Emacs manuals in texinfo?

Guidelines for writing Emacs manuals in texinfo?

[Eric Abrahamsen]

Hi,

Are there guidelines for writing manuals for Emacs' packages in texinfo?
Specifically, conventions for which macros to use where, how to format
lists of keybindings or user options, all that stuff?

I've been looking at the Emacs manual sources, and that's useful, but it
would also really be nice to have something laid out explicitly, to help
people get off the ground.

Thanks,
Eric

Re: Guidelines for writing Emacs manuals in texinfo?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net>
> Date: Sun, 06 Aug 2017 09:01:02 -0700
> 
> Are there guidelines for writing manuals for Emacs' packages in texinfo?
> Specifically, conventions for which macros to use where, how to format
> lists of keybindings or user options, all that stuff?

Look in the Texinfo manual, it explains the GNU guidelines for that.
Maybe there are a few quirks specific to Emacs, but if there are, I
couldn't recall them, so they must be minor.

Re: Guidelines for writing Emacs manuals in texinfo?

[Eric Abrahamsen]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> From: Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net>
>> Date: Sun, 06 Aug 2017 09:01:02 -0700
>> 
>> Are there guidelines for writing manuals for Emacs' packages in texinfo?
>> Specifically, conventions for which macros to use where, how to format
>> lists of keybindings or user options, all that stuff?
>
> Look in the Texinfo manual, it explains the GNU guidelines for that.
> Maybe there are a few quirks specific to Emacs, but if there are, I
> couldn't recall them, so they must be minor.

Thanks, I had checked there, but not deeply enough. It looks like the
"Definition Commands" section is what I was after.

Eric

Re: Guidelines for writing Emacs manuals in texinfo?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net>
> Date: Sun, 06 Aug 2017 10:27:50 -0700
> 
> > Look in the Texinfo manual, it explains the GNU guidelines for that.
> > Maybe there are a few quirks specific to Emacs, but if there are, I
> > couldn't recall them, so they must be minor.
> 
> Thanks, I had checked there, but not deeply enough. It looks like the
> "Definition Commands" section is what I was after.

The Texinfo manual is extensively indexed, so "i defun RET", for
example, will land you where that command is described.