21.1.5 Running makeinfo Within Emacs

You can run makeinfo in GNU Emacs Texinfo mode by using either the makeinfo-region or the makeinfo-buffer commands. In Texinfo mode, the commands are bound to C-c C-m C-r and C-c C-m C-b by default.

C-c C-m C-r

M-x makeinfo-region

Format the current region for Info.

C-c C-m C-b

M-x makeinfo-buffer

Format the current buffer for Info.

When you invoke makeinfo-region the output goes to a temporary buffer. When you invoke makeinfo-buffer output goes to the file set with @setfilename (see section @setfilename: Set the output file name).

The Emacs makeinfo-region and makeinfo-buffer commands run the makeinfo program in a temporary shell buffer. If makeinfo finds any errors, Emacs displays the error messages in the temporary buffer.

You can parse the error messages by typing C-x ` (next-error). This causes Emacs to go to and position the cursor on the line in the Texinfo source that makeinfo thinks caused the error. See (emacs)Compilation section `Running make or Compilers Generally' in The GNU Emacs Manual, for more information about using the next-error command.

In addition, you can kill the shell in which the makeinfo command is running or make the shell buffer display its most recent output.

C-c C-m C-k

M-x makeinfo-kill-job

Kill the current running makeinfo job (from makeinfo-region or makeinfo-buffer).

C-c C-m C-l

M-x makeinfo-recenter-output-buffer

Redisplay the makeinfo shell buffer to display its most recent output.

(Note that the parallel commands for killing and recentering a TeX job are C-c C-t C-k and C-c C-t C-l. See section Formatting and Printing in Texinfo Mode.)

You can specify options for makeinfo by setting the makeinfo-options variable with either the M-x customize or the M-x set-variable command, or by setting the variable in your ‘.emacs’ initialization file.

For example, you could write the following in your ‘.emacs’ file:

(setq makeinfo-options
     "--paragraph-indent=0 --no-split
      --fill-column=70 --verbose")

For more information, see
(emacs)Easy Customization section `Easy Customization Interface' in The GNU Emacs Manual,
(emacs)Examining section `Examining and Setting Variables' in The GNU Emacs Manual,
(emacs)Init File section `Init File' in The GNU Emacs Manual, and
Options for makeinfo.