think-free

Most of the documentation for GNU tools comes in Info format. Info format is more advanced than normal UNIX manpages and has lots of good features. Info file format is conceptually similar to HTML files; some say Info file format exists even before HTML was invented. Here is a quick introduction on how to browse through Info manuals.

Left and Right

Keys l and r stand for Left and Right navigation. They allow you to browse through your History. Key l, takes you one step backward in the history and r takes you forward in the history.

Space, Backspace and Begining

Space key acts like a page-down and Backspace key acts like a page-up. These keys work across the Info pages, so you can skim through the whole manual down using Space key and similarly bottom-up using Backspace key. Inside a page, you can jump to the begining of that page by pressing b always.

Next, Previous and Up

Every Info manual contains multiple pages (called nodes) of content and they are conceptually organized in a tree structure. At any level (or depth) you can visit the next node using n, and previous node using p. If you want to visit the parent node, you can press u.

Others

Each node has an associated name, so if you know the name of a node, you can always press m and enter the name of the node. Info will take you directly to that node.

These must be sufficient to get started with reading Info manuals. Now go and start reading Info node, with

info info

command. Have Fun.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 13th, 2007 at 3:43 am and is filed under info. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.