6.2.3 Fonts for Printing

Texinfo provides one command to change the size of the main body font in the TeX output for a document: @fonttextsize. It has no effect in other output. It takes a single argument on the remainder of the line, which must be either ‘10’ or ‘11’. For example:

@fonttextsize 10

The effect is to reduce the body font to a 10pt size (the default is 11pt). Fonts for other elements, such as sections and chapters, are reduced accordingly. This should only be used in conjunction with @smallbook (see @smallbook: Printing “Small” Books) or similar, since 10pt fonts on standard paper (8.5x11 or A4) are too small. One reason to use this command is to save pages, and hence printing cost, for physical books.

Texinfo does not at present have commands to switch the font family to use, or more general size-changing commands.

Texinfo also provides a number of font commands that specify font changes in the printed manual and (where possible) in the HTML output. They have no effect in Info. All the commands apply to a following argument surrounded by braces.

@b ¶

selects bold face;

@i ¶

selects an italic font;

@r ¶

selects a roman font, which is the usual font in which text is printed. It may or may not be seriffed.

@sansserif ¶

selects a sans serif font;

@slanted ¶

selects a slanted font;

@t ¶

selects the fixed-width, typewriter-style font used by @code;

(The commands with longer names were invented much later than the others, at which time it did not seem desirable to use very short names for such infrequently needed features.)

The @r command can be useful in example-like environments, to write comments in the standard roman font instead of the fixed-width font. This looks better in printed output, and produces a <lineannotation> tag in DocBook output.

For example,

@lisp
(+ 2 2)    ; @r{Add two plus two.}
@end lisp

produces

(+ 2 2)    ; Add two plus two.

The @t command can occasionally be useful to produce output in a typewriter font where that is supported (e.g., HTML and PDF), but no distinction is needed in Info or plain text: @t{foo} produces foo, cf. @code{foo} producing foo.

In general, the other font commands are unlikely to be useful; they exist primarily to make it possible to document the functionality of specific font effects, such as in TeX and related packages.