G.4 Using the Emacs Info Reader for Octave

You may also use the Emacs Info reader with Octave's doc function. For this, the package ‘gnuserv’ needs to be installed.

If ‘gnuserv’ is installed, add the lines

(autoload 'octave-help "octave-hlp" nil t)
(require 'gnuserv)
(gnuserv-start)

to your ‘.emacs’ file.

You can use either `plain' Emacs Info or the function octave-help as your Octave info reader (for ‘help -i’). In the former case, use info_program ("info-emacs-info"). The latter is perhaps more attractive because it allows to look up keys in the indices of several info files related to Octave (provided that the Emacs variable octave-help-files is set correctly). In this case, use info_program ("info-emacs-octave-help").

If you use Octave from within Emacs, it is best to add these settings to your ‘~/.emacs-octave’ startup file (or the file pointed to by the Emacs variable inferior-octave-startup-file).