Re: Indexing macros

[John Culleton <john@wexfordpress.com>]

On Monday 02 December 2002 16:41, Taco Hoekwater wrote:
> On Mon, 2 Dec 2002 16:20:52 +0000, John wrote:
> > The "register" macros in Context only provide for a single level
> > index AFAIK so I have been looking at the use of either makeindex
> > or Xindy in a Context project. I have slightly modified the
> > index.tex file
>
> Unless I misunderstand your intentions, you were looking this ConTeXt
> command:
>
> \index{main+sub+subsub}
Thanks for your correction! It is even in the manual :-] But there are
other features found in Makeindex and especially Xindy that are
useful. For example attributes attached to the page reference # can be
passed through the system. An entry, subentry etc. can be sorted out
of order. This also handles elegantly the situation where one needs to
put a font change in with the item, e.g.:
\index{sortitem@\it Sortitem\rm}

The Context manual mentions the "see" form of entry but not
the "see also" form, although there is passing reference to another
form (not described fully) that allows one to input a "pure ASCII
string." 

Makeindex will automatically collapse a page reference string. If
three or more successive pages have the identical index item then
"1,2,3" becomes "1-3" etc. Perhaps Context does this also.

Xindy will handle appendix references like "A-3" although these are
becoming rarer.

Both Makeindex and Xindy have style files that allow for customizing
of the output. For example the letter headers might be centered in the
column, or left justified, in bold or not, capital or lower case,
surrounded by em dashes etc. 

Xindy goes well beyond this, allowing for special headers for e.g.
Hungarian which has the letter combination Ly sorted separately. 

Perhaps as is so often the case, the features are there but not yet
described in Context. A Context-only solution would be nice, but in
the meantime the power of the existing packages are available. 
-- 
John Culleton
Able Indexers and Typesetters 
Rowse Reviews
Culleton Editorial Services
http://wexfordpress.com