1. Overview

Texinfo is the official documentation format of the GNU project. It uses a single source file to produce both online information and printed output.

It is often desirable to have a way to produce HTML from Texinfo sources, as GNU-Info files are produced. It is much simpler to run a converter than it is to rewrite all the documentation in HTML, especially considering that there is so much Texinfo documentation in the world.

Some time ago makeinfo wasn't able to produce HTML output format, but people still wanted documentation in HTML. This was the birthing hour for texi2html. The basic purpose of texi2html is to convert Texinfo documents into HTML.

Since then, HTML support in makeinfo has improved, but texi2html is still stronger in many areas, including the degree to which it allows customization. With texi2html, some important aspects of the resulting HTML files may be specified via command line options, and configuration files provide an even finer degree of control over the final output, allowing most every aspect of the final output not specified in the Texinfo input file to be specified. Configuration files are written in perl, like the main program, and anything which may be specified on the command line may also be specified within a configuration file.

For an example of the kind of pages texi2html is capable of producing, have a look at the following sites: the Singular Manual, the Cederqvist (CVS Manual).

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