To use the updating commands, you must organize the Texinfo file hierarchically with chapters, sections, subsections, and the like. When you construct the hierarchy of the manual, do not ‘jump down’ more than one level at a time: you can follow the ‘Top’ node with a chapter, but not with a section; you can follow a chapter with a section, but not with a subsection. However, you may ‘jump up’ any number of levels at one time—for example, from a subsection to a chapter.
Each @node line, with the exception of the line for the ‘Top’
node, must be followed by a line with a structuring command such as
@chapter, @section, or
@unnumberedsubsec.
Each @node line/structuring-command line combination
must look either like this:
@node Comments, Minimum, Conventions, Overview @comment node-name, next, previous, up @section Comments
or like this (without the @comment line):
@node Comments, Minimum, Conventions, Overview @section Comments
or like this (without the explicit node pointers):
@node Comments @section Comments
In this example, ‘Comments’ is the name of both the node and the section. The next node is called ‘Minimum’ and the previous node is called ‘Conventions’. The ‘Comments’ section is within the ‘Overview’ node, which is specified by the ‘Up’ pointer.
If a file has a ‘Top’ node, it must be called ‘top’ or ‘Top’ and be the first node in the file.
The menu updating commands create a menu of sections within a chapter, a menu of subsections within a section, and so on. This means that you must have a ‘Top’ node if you want a menu of chapters.