F.2.4 Info Format: Cross-reference

A general cross-reference in Info format has one of the following two forms:

    <cross-reference> =
  * (N|n)ote <id>::
| * (N|n)ote <label>:<id>(.|,)

     <id> = (<lparen><infofile><rparen>)?(<del>?<nodename><del>?)?
|    <id> = (<lparen><infofile><rparen>)?(<nodename>)?
    <label> = <del>?<label text><del>?

No space should occur between the ‘*’ character and the following ‘N’ or ‘n’. ‘*Note’ should be used at the start of a sentence, otherwise ‘*note’ should be used. (Some Info readers, such as the one in Emacs, can display ‘*Note’ and ‘*note’ as ‘See’ and ‘see’ respectively.) In both cases, <label text> is descriptive text.

In both forms the <id> refers to a node or anchor, in the same way as a reference in the node information line does (see Info Format: Regular Nodes). The optional parenthesized ‘<infofile>’ is the name of the manual being referenced, and the <nodename> is the node or anchor within that manual,

The second form has a descriptive label. A cross-reference in this form should usually be terminated with a comma or period, to make it feasible to find the end of the <id>.

If <label> contains a colon character (:), it should be surrounded with a pair of <del> characters. Likewise, if <nodename> contains problematic characters (such as commas or periods), it should be surrounded by a pair of <del> characters; then a terminating comma or period is not needed.

As with node names, this quoting mechanism has as of the time of writing limited support in Info-reading programs; hence we do not recommend using it until this changes.

The format does not prescribe how to find other manuals to resolve such references.

Here are some examples:

*note GNU Free Documentation License::
*note Tag table: Info Format Tag Table, for details.
*Note Overview: (make)Top.
*Note ^?:^?: (bash)Bourne Shell Builtins.
*Note alloca.h: (gnulib)^?alloca.h^?.

The first shows a reference to a node in the current manual using the short form.

The second also refers to a node in the current manual, namely ‘Info Format Tag Table’; the ‘Tag table’ before the ‘:’ is only a label on this particular reference, and the ‘for details.’ is text belonging to the sentence, not part of the reference.

The third example refers to the node ‘Top’ in another manual, namely ‘make’, with ‘Overview’ being the label for this cross-reference.

The fourth example shows a colon character being quoted in a label, and the fifth example shows a period being quoted in a node name.

See Cross-references.