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2.5 Texinfo File Header

Texinfo files start with at least two lines:

\input texinfo
@settitle Sample Manual 1.0

The ‘\input texinfo’ line tells TeX to use the texinfo.tex file, which tells TeX how to translate the Texinfo @-commands into TeX typesetting commands. (Note the use of the backslash, ‘\’; this is correct for TeX.)

The @settitle line specifies a title for the page headers (or footers) of the printed manual, and the default title and document description for the ‘<head>’ in HTML. (Strictly speaking, @settitle is optional—if you don’t mind your document being titled ‘Untitled’.)

Also, you can optionally write the @settitle line between start-of-header and end-of-header lines if you want to format just part of the Texinfo file in Emacs.

It makes sense to include any command that affects document formatting as a whole in the header. @synindex (see @synindex: Combining Indices), for instance, is another command often included in the header.