fun with texinfo

here's a fun note that may help someone else pulling their hair out trying to get texinfo's texi2dvi to handle input that uses sequences like @^i to generate the letter 'i' with a circumflex ('î'). if you get errors like this:

! Missing $ inserted.
<inserted text> 
                $
<to be read again>
                   ^
l.1234 this '@^
            i' has a funny hat.

it means that you forgot \input texinfo in the first line of your texinfo file.