3.5 The @top Sectioning Command

The @top command is a special sectioning command that you should only use after a ‘@node Top’ line at the beginning of a Texinfo file. The @top command tells the makeinfo formatter which node is to be used as the root of the node tree.

It produces the same sort of output as @unnumbered (see @unnumbered, @appendix: Chapters with Other Labeling).

@top is ignored when raising or lowering sections. That is, it is never lowered and nothing can be raised to it (see Raise/lower Sections: @raisesections and @lowersections).

It used to be conventionial to wrap the ‘Top’ node in an @ifnottex conditional so that it would not appear in TeX output (see Conditionally Visible Text). Thus, a Top node often looked like this:

@ifnottex
@node Top
@top your-manual-title

very-high-level-summary
@end ifnottex

This is no longer necessary, as the ‘Top’ node is now never output for TeX output.