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Next: <a href="Invoking-texi2any.html" accesskey="n" rel="next">Invoking <code>texi2any</code></a>, Up: <a href="Generic-Translator-texi2any.html" accesskey="u" rel="up">Generic Translator <code>texi2any</code></a> &nbsp; [<a href="index.html#SEC_Contents" title="Table of contents" rel="contents">Contents</a>][<a href="Command-and-Variable-Index.html" title="Index" rel="index">Index</a>]
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<h3 class="section">20.1 <code>texi2any</code>: A Texinfo Reference Implementation</h3>

Above, we called <code>texi2any</code> &ldquo;the&rdquo; translator for Texinfo
instead of just &ldquo;a&rdquo; translator, even though (of course) it&rsquo;s
technically and legally possible for other implementations to be
written. The reason is that alternative implementations are very
likely to have subtle, or not-so-subtle, differences in behavior, and
thus Texinfo documents would become dependent on the processor.
Therefore, it is important to have a reference implementation that
defines parts of the language not fully specified by the manual (often
intentionally so). It is equally important to have consistent
command-line options and other behavior for all processors.




For this reason, the once-independent <code>texi2html</code> Perl Texinfo
processor was made compatible with the C implementation of
<code>makeinfo</code>, to avoid continuing with two different
implementations (see <a href="History.html">History</a>). The current implementation,
<code>texi2any</code>, serves as the reference implementation. It
inherited the design of customization and other features from
<code>texi2html</code> (for more on <code>texi2html</code> compatibility,
see <a href="texi2html.html"><code>texi2html</code></a>). However, <code>texi2any</code> is a full
reimplementation: it constructs a tree-based representation of the
input document for all back-ends to work from.



Extensive tests of the language were developed at the same time as
<code>texi2any</code>; we plead with anyone thinking of writing a program
to parse Texinfo input to at least make use of these tests.



The <code>texi2html</code> wrapper script (see <a href="texi2html.html"><code>texi2html</code></a>)
provides a very simple example of calling <code>texi2any</code> from a
shell script; it&rsquo;s in <samp>util/texi2html</samp> in the Texinfo sources.
More consequentially, <code>texi-elements-by-size</code> is an example
Perl script using the <code>Texinfo::Parser</code> module interface; it&rsquo;s
also in the <samp>util</samp> source directory. (Its functionality may also
be useful to authors; see <a href="Tips.html#texi_002delements_002dby_002dsize">texi-elements-by-size</a>.)


With the release of <code>texi2any</code> as the reference
implementation, development of both the C implementation of
<code>makeinfo</code> and <code>texi2html</code> has been halted. Going
forward, we ask authors of Texinfo documents to use only
<code>texi2any</code>.

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Next: <a href="Invoking-texi2any.html" accesskey="n" rel="next">Invoking <code>texi2any</code></a>, Up: <a href="Generic-Translator-texi2any.html" accesskey="u" rel="up">Generic Translator <code>texi2any</code></a> &nbsp; [<a href="index.html#SEC_Contents" title="Table of contents" rel="contents">Contents</a>][<a href="Command-and-Variable-Index.html" title="Index" rel="index">Index</a>]
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