By convention, the name of a Texinfo file ends with one of the extensions .texi, .texinfo, .txi, or .tex. Using .tex is discouraged as this extension is already used by TeX and LaTeX input files. The most common and recommended extension is .texi. The name of a Texinfo file should only contain ASCII characters.
The output name is based on the input file name, in the default case. First, any of the extensions .texi, .tex, .txi, or .texinfo is removed from the input file name; then, the output format specific extension is added—.html when generating HTML, .info when generating Info, etc. The output name should only contain ASCII characters1.
In order to be made into a printed manual, a Texinfo file must begin with a line like this:
\input texinfo
The contents of the file follow this beginning, and then you must end the Texinfo source with a line like this:
@bye
The @bye line at the end of the file on a line of its own tells
TeX that the file is ended and to stop formatting. If you
leave this out, you’ll be dumped at TeX’s prompt at the end of the
run.
Furthermore, you will usually provide a Texinfo file with a title, a title page, indices, and the like, all of which are explained in this manual. But the minimum, which can be useful for short documents, is just the one line at the beginning and the one line at the end.
Without additional information, the input and output encodings are assumed to be UTF-8, an universal codeset compatible with 7-bit ASCII.
texi2any can handle non ASCII characters
in input file names, but non ASCII characters in output name will create
problems for some output formats, especially for cross-references.