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<span id="Referring-to-a-Manual-as-a-Whole"></span><div class="header">
<p>
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<hr>
<span id="Referring-to-a-Manual-as-a-Whole-1"></span><h3 class="section">6.5 Referring to a Manual as a Whole</h3>
<span id="index-Manual_002c-referring-to-as-a-whole"></span>
<span id="index-Referring-to-an-entire-manual"></span>
<span id="Top-Node-Naming"></span>
<p>Ordinarily, you must always name a node in a cross-reference.
However, it’s not unusual to want to refer to another manual as a
whole, rather than a particular section within it. In this case,
giving any section name is an unnecessary distraction.
</p>
<p>So, with cross-references to other manuals (see <a href="Four-and-Five-Arguments.html">Four and Five Arguments</a>), if the first argument is either ‘<samp>Top</samp>’ (capitalized
just that way) or omitted entirely, and the third argument is omitted,
the printed output includes no node or section name. (The Info output
includes ‘<samp>Top</samp>’ if it was given.) For example,
</p>
<div class="example">
<pre class="example">@xref{Top,,, make, The GNU Make Manual}.
</pre></div>
<p>produces
</p>
<div class="example">
<pre class="example">*Note (make)Top::.
</pre></div>
<p>and
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>See <cite>The GNU Make Manual</cite>.
</p></blockquote>
<p>Info readers will go to the Top node of the manual whether
or not the ‘Top’ node is explicitly specified.
</p>
<p>It’s also possible (and is historical practice) to refer to a whole
manual by specifying the ‘Top’ node and an appropriate entry for the
third argument to the <code>@xref</code> command. Using this idiom, to
make a cross-reference to <cite>The GNU Make Manual</cite>, you would write:
</p>
<div class="example">
<pre class="example">@xref{Top,, Overview, make, The GNU Make Manual}.
</pre></div>
<p>which produces
</p>
<div class="example">
<pre class="example">*Note Overview: (make)Top.
</pre></div>
<p>in Info and
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>See section “Overview” in <cite>The GNU Make Manual</cite>.
</p></blockquote>
<p>in a printed manual.
</p>
<p>In this example, ‘<samp>Top</samp>’ is the name of the first node, and
‘<samp>Overview</samp>’ is the name of the first section of the manual. There
is no widely-used convention for naming the first section in a printed
manual, this is just what the Make manual happens to use. This
arbitrariness of the first name is a principal reason why omitting the
third argument in whole-manual cross-references is preferable.
</p>
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Next: <a href="_0040ref.html" accesskey="n" rel="next"><code>@ref</code></a>, Previous: <a href="_0040xref.html" accesskey="p" rel="prev"><code>@xref</code></a>, Up: <a href="Cross-References.html" accesskey="u" rel="up">Cross References</a> [<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>]</p>
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