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7.2 Writing a Menu

A menu consists of an @menu command on a line by itself followed by menu entry lines or menu comment lines and then by an @end menu command on a line by itself.

A menu looks like this:

@menu
Larger Units of Text

* Files::                       All about handling files.
* Multiples: Buffers.           Multiple buffers; editing
                                 several files at once.
@end menu

In a menu, every line that begins with an ‘ is a menu entry. (Note the space after the asterisk.) A line that does not start with an ‘ may also appear in a menu. Such a line is not a menu entry but rather a menu comment line that appears in the Info file. In the example above, the line ‘Larger Units of Text’ is such a menu comment line; the two lines starting with ‘ are menu entries. Space characters in a menu are preserved as-is in the Info output; this allows you to format the menu as you wish. Unfortunately you must type node names without any extra spaces or some versions of some Info readers will not find the node (see Node Line Requirements).

In the HTML output from makeinfo, the accesskey attribute is used with the values ‘1’…‘9’ for the first nine entries. This allows people using web browsers to follow the first menu entries using (typically) M-digit, e.g., M-1 for the first entry.