How to display an info page (not installed on system)?

Question

I'm working on documentation for a large eLisp library. I have it in *.info file. I would like to be able to display its contents (also during development) in Emacs somehow, but I can't find a way to display it in info mode (I can only open it as source).

Ideally, I'd also be interested in a mechanism to add this file to the contents of info-finder.

Answer 1

As a shortcut, you can launch a file from within a dired buffer directly into info mode by pressing the 'I' key on the file.

Just ensure you've loaded the dired-x package (included in 24) and have the variable dired-bind-info set to true

(load "dired-x")
(setq dired-x-hands-off-my-keys nil)
(setq dired-bind-info t)
(dired-x-bind-find-file)

• Chris

Answer 2

C-uC-hi will prompt you for an info file to read.

As for installing a new info file, you basically add the file to a directory in your INFOPATH and then add an entry for it in the Info Directory node (i.e. the dir file).

You can get into some of the details here:
C-hig (info) Expert Info RET

Or ask Google: http://www.google.com/search?q=install+info+file

Answer 3

The doc for info says:

info is an interactive compiled Lisp function in `info.el'.
It is bound to C-h i, <help> i.
[....]
In interactive use, a non-numeric prefix argument directs
this command to read a file name from the minibuffer.

So: C-u C-h i.

(info-finder looks for keywords in source code, not in info files, so it doesn't make sense to add an info file to it.)