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7 Menus

Menus contain pointers to subordinate nodes.(6) In Info, you use menus to go to such nodes. Menus have no effect in printed manuals and do not appear in them.

By convention, a menu is put at the end of a node since a reader who uses the menu may not see text that follows it. Furthermore, a node that has a menu should not contain much text. If you have a lot of text and a menu, move most of the text into a new subnode—all but a few lines. Otherwise, a reader with a terminal that displays only a few lines may miss the menu and its associated text. As a practical matter, you should locate a menu within 20 lines of the beginning of the node.

Menus Need Short Nodes

The short text before a menu may look awkward in a printed manual. To avoid this, you can write a menu near the beginning of its node and follow the menu by an @node line, and then an @heading line located within @ifinfo and @end ifinfo. This way, the menu, @node line, and title appear only in the Info file, not the printed document.

For example, the preceding two paragraphs follow an Info-only menu, @node line, and heading, and look like this:

@menu
* Menu Location::             Put a menu in a short node.
* Writing a Menu::            What is a menu?
* Menu Parts::                A menu entry has three parts.
* Less Cluttered Menu Entry:: Two part menu entry.
* Menu Example::              Two and three part entries.
* Other Info Files::          How to refer to a different
                                Info file.
@end menu

@node Menu Location, Writing a Menu, , Menus
@ifinfo
@heading Menus Need Short Nodes
@end ifinfo

The Texinfo file for this document contains a number of examples of this procedure; one is at the beginning of this chapter.


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