GNU Info contains several variables whose values are looked at by various Info commands. You can change the values of these variables, and thus change the behaviour of Info to more closely match your environment and info file reading manner.
M-x set-variable
M-x describe-variable
Here is a list of the variables that you can set in Info.
automatic-footnotes
On
, footnotes appear and disappear automatically.
This variable is On
by default. When a node is selected, a
window containing the footnotes which appear in that node is created,
and the footnotes are displayed within the new window. The window that
Info creates to contain the footnotes is called `*Footnotes*'. If
a node is selected which contains no footnotes, and a `*Footnotes*'
window is on the screen, the `*Footnotes*' window is deleted.
Footnote windows created in this fashion are not automatically tiled so
that they can use as little of the display as is possible.
automatic-tiling
On
, creating or deleting a window resizes other
windows. This variable is Off
by default. Normally, typing
`C-x 2' divides the current window into two equal parts. When
automatic-tiling
is set to On
, all of the windows are
resized automatically, keeping an equal number of lines visible in each
window. There are exceptions to the automatic tiling; specifically, the
windows `*Completions*' and `*Footnotes*' are not
resized through automatic tiling; they remain their original size.
visible-bell
On
, GNU Info attempts to flash the screen instead of
ringing the bell. This variable is Off
by default. Of course,
Info can only flash the screen if the terminal allows it; in the case
that the terminal does not allow it, the setting of this variable has no
effect. However, you can make Info perform quietly by setting the
errors-ring-bell
variable to Off
.
errors-ring-bell
On
, errors cause the bell to ring. The default
setting of this variable is On
.
gc-compressed-files
On
, Info garbage collects files which had to be
uncompressed. The default value of this variable is Off
.
Whenever a node is visited in Info, the info file containing that node
is read into core, and Info reads information about the tags and nodes
contained in that file. Once the tags information is read by Info, it
is never forgotten. However, the actual text of the nodes does not need
to remain in core unless a particular info window needs it. For
non-compressed files, the text of the nodes does not remain in core when
it is no longer in use. But de-compressing a file can be a time
consuming operation, and so Info tries hard not to do it twice.
gc-compressed-files
tells Info it is okay to garbage collect the
text of the nodes of a file which was compressed on disk.
show-index-match
On
, the portion of the matched search string is
highlighted in the message which explains where the matched search
string was found. The default value of this variable is On
.
When Info displays the location where an index match was found,
(see section Searching an Info File), the portion of the
string that you had typed is highlighted by displaying it in the inverse
case from its surrounding characters.
scroll-behaviour
Continuous
. There
are three possible values for this variable:
Continuous
global-next-node
) and `[' (global-prev-node
)
commands.
Next Only
Page Only
scroll-behaviour
is
Page Only
, no scrolling command can change the node that is being
viewed.
scroll-step
scroll-step
has a
nonzero value, Info attempts to scroll the node text by that many lines;
if that is enough to bring the cursor back into the window, that is what
is done. The default value of this variable is 0, thus placing the
cursor (and the text it is attached to) in the center of the window.
Setting this variable to 1 causes a kind of "smooth scrolling" which
some people prefer.
ISO-Latin
On
, Info accepts and displays ISO Latin-1 characters.
By default, Info assumes an ASCII character set. ISO-Latin
tells
Info that it is running in an environment where the European standard
character set is in use, and allows you to input such characters to
Info, as well as display them.