Indexing

Indexing

[John Culleton]

The indexing part of Context (called ``register'') seems to
be limited in some respects when compared to makeindex and
xindy. Has anyone tried to incorporate these other indexing 
products in a Context document? 

-- 
John Culleton, john@wexfordpress.com
   Able Indexers and Typesetters
      http://wexfordpress.com
<------------------------------------>

Re: Indexing

[Taco Hoekwater]

Hi John,

I know for a fact that Hans has been looking into xindy. IIRC,
makeindex just isn't powerful enough to be usable with Context,
and xindy was 'nearly there but not quite usable yet' (that was 
the situation about 2 years ago).

Context's registers pre-date xindy as well as the dos/win
port of makeindex by a couple of years, which is no doubt
the reason why Hans invented his own system.

The thing that is definately needed in a replacement program is 
the possibility to pass along 'piggyback' data together with the
actual index entry. Joachim was very understanding about that
request, but I don't know whether they did or did not implement
it in xindy (yet?).

Greetings, Taco

On Fri, 22 Feb 2002 12:24:24 -0500 "John Culleton" wrote:
> The indexing part of Context (called ``register'') seems to
> be limited in some respects when compared to makeindex and
> xindy. Has anyone tried to incorporate these other indexing 
> products in a Context document? 

-- 
groeten,

Taco

Re: Indexing

[John Culleton]

On Thursday 21 February 2002 04:33, Taco Hoekwater wrote:
> Hi John,
>
> I know for a fact that Hans has been looking into xindy. IIRC,
> makeindex just isn't powerful enough to be usable with Context,
> and xindy was 'nearly there but not quite usable yet' (that was
> the situation about 2 years ago).
>
>
I recognize that makeindex lacks the hyperref features that may be 
useful
for online documents, as well as the extensions that Xindy hopes to
bring to the indexing process. But it suits my needs. So can I 
include eplain.tex and use its indexing commands without messing 
something
else up? AFAIK its macros (\idx, \sidx etc.) do not have name 
conflicts
with the corresponding ConText commands.

Since I do indexing and typesetting for money this is not just idle
curiosity :-) 

John Culleton

Re: Indexing

[Taco Hoekwater]

On Thu, 21 Feb 2002 19:22:58 -0500
"John Culleton" <john@wexfordpress.com> wrote:

> I recognize that makeindex lacks the hyperref features that may be 
> useful
> for online documents, as well as the extensions that Xindy hopes to
> bring to the indexing process. But it suits my needs. So can I 
> include eplain.tex and use its indexing commands without messing 
> something
> else up? AFAIK its macros (\idx, \sidx etc.) do not have name 
> conflicts with the corresponding ConText commands.

At least the indexing part should be safe. I'm not sure about the
rest eplain. It *used to* work but that was a very long time ago.
You 'll just have to try and see. 

I used to have a small set of indexing macros for plain, these
probably would also work. Most plain macro packages work out of the 
box, or with only trivial changes.

The thing is: I like the ConTeXt registers a lot. I don't want
to go back to makeindex anymore (even though getting the sort order
right in texutil can be a pain). 

-- 
groeten,

Taco

Re[2]: Indexing

[Giuseppe Bilotta]

Taco wrote:

TH> The thing is: I like the ConTeXt registers a lot. I don't want
TH> to go back to makeindex anymore (even though getting the sort order
TH> right in texutil can be a pain). 

... and if TeXUtil had plug-in support we could design a new
indexing module to fix it. When Hans gets back, we really have to
get this TeXUtil module interface up.

--
Giuseppe "Oblomov" Bilotta

Re: Re[2]: Indexing

[Taco Hoekwater]

You're back at it, aren't you? :-)

On Fri, 22 Feb 2002 12:38:15 +0100 Giuseppe Bilotta wrote:

> ... and if TeXUtil had plug-in support we could design a new
> indexing module to fix it. When Hans gets back, we really have to
> get this TeXUtil module interface up.

-- 
groeten,

Taco

Re[4]: Indexing

[Giuseppe Bilotta]

Friday, February 22, 2002 Taco Hoekwater wrote:

TH> You're back at it, aren't you? :-)

Of course I am! I think it's *extremely* important!

--
Giuseppe "Oblomov" Bilotta

Re: Re[4]: Indexing

[Taco Hoekwater]

Ok, I'll setup a framework for approval bij Hans.

Expect more in a couple of days ...

On Fri, 22 Feb 2002 14:37:41 +0100
"Giuseppe Bilotta" <bourbaki@bigfoot.com> wrote:

> 
> Friday, February 22, 2002 Taco Hoekwater wrote:
> 
> TH> You're back at it, aren't you? :-)
> 
> Of course I am! I think it's *extremely* important!
> 
> --
> Giuseppe "Oblomov" Bilotta

-- 
groeten,

Taco

Re: Indexing

[Hans Hagen]

At 12:24 PM 2/22/2002 -0500, you wrote:
>The indexing part of Context (called ``register'') seems to
>be limited in some respects when compared to makeindex and

it will probably match those of makeindex

>xindy. Has anyone tried to incorporate these other indexing
>products in a Context document?

xindy is interesting but since there is a limitation is the number of 
attributes (which i need for hyperlinks and so) it is not yet an option; 
more extensive attirbute support was discussed years ago but afaik it 
didn't show up yet

Hans
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                                   Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE | pragma@wxs.nl
                       Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
  tel: +31 (0)38 477 53 69 | fax: +31 (0)38 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
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Re: Indexing

[John Culleton]

On Monday 25 February 2002 09:00, Hans Hagen wrote:
> At 12:24 PM 2/22/2002 -0500, you wrote:
> >The indexing part of Context (called ``register'') seems to
> >be limited in some respects when compared to makeindex and
>
> it will probably match those of makeindex
>
>
Two features that I like in makeindex:

1 Automatic range feature. If the same item is referenced
in three or more successive pages a page range
is created by default (This can be turned off.)

2. Multiple formats. I use the following script with
two different parameter files to produce one file to
feed back into the typesetting job and another
in plain ascii (for later conversion to rtf):

tex $1.tex
makeindex -s alpha.ist  $1 -o $1.jnd
makeindex -s dummy.ist $1 -o $1.ind
tex $1.tex
dvips $1.dvi
ps2pdf $1.ps
acroread  $1.pdf

AFAIK Context does not do either of these.

Best,

John Culleton

Re: Indexing

[Taco Hoekwater]

On Mon, 25 Feb 2002 16:12:25 -0500
"John Culleton" <john@wexfordpress.com> wrote:

> 1 Automatic range feature. If the same item is referenced
> in three or more successive pages a page range
> is created by default (This can be turned off.)

Ouch! I *know* that I had a generic macro solution for this, but
it probably got trashed after a re-install. The same problem
applies to references, so there is code in m-bib that takes
care of the problem. Anyway, a macro-base solution is fairly
simple to implement within context.

> 2. Multiple formats. I use the following script with
> two different parameter files to produce one file to
> feed back into the typesetting job and another
> in plain ascii (for later conversion to rtf):

This is a trivial perl exercise: parse the tuo file for the register
entries and write a new file. 

In fact, implementing all of makeindex' functionality in perl is not 
too hard either.

-- 
groeten,

Taco

Re: Indexing

[Hans Hagen]

At 04:12 PM 2/25/2002 -0500, you wrote:

>1 Automatic range feature. If the same item is referenced
>in three or more successive pages a page range
>is created by default (This can be turned off.)

I can look into that once i clean up the register module

for the moment, there is the following (structure related, since having 
three entries is a row is kind of unstructured) method:

\startregister[index]{aa}test\page
test\page
\stopregister[index]{aa}test\page

>2. Multiple formats. I use the following script with
>two different parameter files to produce one file to
>feed back into the typesetting job and another
>in plain ascii (for later conversion to rtf):
>
>tex $1.tex
>makeindex -s alpha.ist  $1 -o $1.jnd
>makeindex -s dummy.ist $1 -o $1.ind
>tex $1.tex
>dvips $1.dvi
>ps2pdf $1.ps
>acroread  $1.pdf
>
>AFAIK Context does not do either of these.

What excactly is this feature suppose to provide? Multiple indexes as well 
as multiple look-and-feel is supported.

Hans
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                   Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE | pragma@wxs.nl
                       Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
  tel: +31 (0)38 477 53 69 | fax: +31 (0)38 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                   fall-back web server: 
www.pragma-pod.nl
-------------------------------------------------------------------------