[scribus] List of words / references possible?

John Culleton john at wexfordpress.com
Wed Nov 17 02:13:57 CET 2010


On Tuesday 16 November 2010 13:00:57 Craig Bradney wrote:
> On 11/16/10 4:13 PM, John Culleton wrote:

>
> I have started working on indexing... started prototyping some
> changes.. no ETA.
>
> Craig

For veteran programmers ETA is always RSN :<)

The bull work of sorting, summarizing and formatting an index can be 
done by the TeX program makeindex. You feed it two files, a list of raw 
index iterms with the suffix idx, and optionally a control file changing 
defaults, especially formatting details, with the suffix .ist. The 
output is expressed in an ascii file with the suffix .ind.  The manual 
for using makeindex is not long. Mostly it deals with the options in 
the control file.

Although makeindex is intended to accept the file .idx from a TeX 
program run, and feed the file .ist back into the next TeX run on the 
same book file I often use it for creating indexes that will be fed 
into another typesetting program.  For this purpose I use the control 
file alpha.ist listed below:
--------------------------
preamble ""
postamble ""
setpage_prefix ""
setpage_suffix ""
group_skip "\n\n\n"
headings_flag 1
heading_prefix "   --"
heading_suffix "--\n\n"
item_0 "\n "
item_1 "\n~    "
item_2 "\n~~      "
item_01 "\n\n~   "
item_x1 "\n\n~    "
item_12 "\n~~      "
item_x2 "\n~~      "
delim_t "\n"
--------------------------
To translate the above gobbledygook you have to read the makeindex 
manual available here:
http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/indexing/makeindex/doc/

In my own stand-alone indexing program tyro.tcl I call makeindex after 
each index term is added. Clumsy I know, but with modern high speed 
computers the delay is negligible. Here are the files which make tyro 
intelligible:
http://wexfordpress.com/tex/tyro.pdf
http://wexfordpress.com/tex/tyro.tcl
http://wexfordpress.com/tex/alpha.ist.

Have a look. 

John Culleton



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