3.2.3 @setfilename: Set the Output File Name

The first Texinfo command (that is, after the \input texinfo) in a document is generally @setfilename:

@setfilename info-file-name

This command is required for TeX, and very strongly recommended for makeinfo.

Write the @setfilename command at the beginning of a line and follow it on the same line by the Info file name. Do not write anything else on the line.

When an @setfilename line is present, the Texinfo processors ignore everything written before the @setfilename line. This is why the very first line of the file (the \input line) does not show up in the output.

The @setfilename line specifies the name of the output file to be generated. This name must be different from the name of the Texinfo file. There are two conventions for choosing the name: you can either remove the extension (such as ‘.texi’) entirely from the input file name, or (recommended) replace it with the ‘.info’ extension.

Although an explicit ‘.info’ extension is preferable, some operating systems cannot handle long file names. You can run into a problem even when the file name you specify is itself short enough. This occurs because the Info formatters split a long Info file into short indirect subfiles, and name them by appending ‘-1’, ‘-2’, …, ‘-10’, ‘-11’, and so on, to the original file name. (See section Tag Files and Split Files.) The subfile name ‘texinfo.info-10’, for example, is too long for old systems with a 14-character limit on filenames; so the Info file name for this document is ‘texinfo’ rather than ‘texinfo.info’. When makeinfo is running on operating systems such as MS-DOS which impose severe limits on file names, it may remove some characters from the original file name to leave enough space for the subfile suffix, thus producing files named ‘texin-10’, ‘gcc.i12’, etc.

When producing another output format, makeinfo will replace any final extension with the output format-specific extension (‘html’ when generating HTML, for example), or add a dot followed by the extension (‘.html’ for HTML) if the given name has no extension.

The @setfilename line produces no output when you typeset a manual with TeX, but it is nevertheless essential: it opens the index and other auxiliary files used by Texinfo, and also reads ‘texinfo.cnf’ if that file is present on your system (see section Preparing for TeX).

If there is no @setfilename line, makeinfo uses the input file name to determine the output name: first, any of the extensions .texi, .tex, .txi or .texinfo is removed from the input file name; then, the output format specific extension is added—.html when generating HTML, .info when generating Info, etc. The \input line is still ignored in this processing, as well as leading blank lines.

See also the ‘--output’ option in Invoking texi2any/makeinfo from a Shell.

This document was generated on October 2, 2013 using texi2html 5.0.