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The character ‘@’ is used to start special Texinfo commands. (It has the same meaning that ‘\’ has in plain TeX.) Texinfo has four types of @-command:
These commands consist of an @ followed by a punctuation mark or other
character that is not part of the alphabet. Non-alphabetic commands are
almost always part of the text within a paragraph, and never take any
argument. The two characters (@ and the other one) are complete in
themselves; none is followed by braces. The non-alphabetic commands
are: @.
, @:
, @*
, @SPACE
,
@TAB
, @NL
, @@
, @{
, and
@}
.
These commands start with @ followed by a word followed by left- and
right-hand braces. These commands insert special symbols in the
document; they do not require arguments. For example,
@dots{}
⇒ ‘…’, @equiv{}
⇒ ‘≡’, @TeX{}
⇒ ‘TeX’,
and @bullet{}
⇒ ‘•’.
These commands start with @ followed by a letter or a word, followed by an
argument within braces. For example, the command @dfn
indicates
the introductory or defining use of a term; it is used as follows: ‘In
Texinfo, @@-commands are @dfn{mark-up} commands.’
These commands occupy an entire line. The line starts with @,
followed by the name of the command (a word); for example, @center
or @cindex
. If no argument is needed, the word is followed by
the end of the line. If there is an argument, it is separated from
the command name by a space. Braces are not used.
Thus, the alphabetic commands fall into classes that have different argument syntaxes. You cannot tell to which class a command belongs by the appearance of its name, but you can tell by the command’s meaning: if the command stands for a glyph, it is in class 2 and does not require an argument; if it makes sense to use the command together with other text as part of a paragraph, the command is in class 3 and must be followed by an argument in braces; otherwise, it is in class 4 and uses the rest of the line as its argument.
The purpose of having a different syntax for commands of classes 3 and
4 is to make Texinfo files easier to read, and also to help the GNU
Emacs paragraph and filling commands work properly. There is only one
exception to this rule: the command @refill
, which is always
used at the end of a paragraph immediately following the final period
or other punctuation character. @refill
takes no argument and
does not require braces. @refill
never confuses the
Emacs paragraph commands because it cannot appear at the beginning of
a line.
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