[tex-eplain] Typesetting index.

[Oleg Katsitadze]

[Sorry for the late reply.]

On Wed, Jan 02, 2008 at 02:21:00PM -0500, John Culleton wrote:
> it would be more convenient to do it at the point of creation of an \idx or
> \sidx tag.
>
> What is the best method for this purpose?

The "encapsulator command" feature of MakeIndex.  Eplain makes it a
little easier by providing the "pagemarkup" option for the indexing
commands (see "4.12.1.2 Modifying index entries").  Below is a
complete example:

,----
| \input eplain
|
| \def\encapdef#1{{\bf #1}}
| \def\encapex#1{{\it #1}}
| \def\encapweird#1{%
|   {\it
|   \idxparserange{#1}%
|   \ifx\idxpagei\empty
|     % The argument is a single page number.
|     \underbar{#1}%
|   \else
|     % The argument is a page range.
|     \underbar{\idxpagei}\idxpagerangedelimiter\underbar{\idxpageii}%
|   \fi}%
| }
|
| This is the definition of \idx[pagemarkup=encapdef]{my term}.
|
| This is the definition of \idx[pagemarkup=encapex]{my other term}.
|
| This is the start of the definition of
| \idx[pagemarkup=encapweird,begin]{yet another term}.
|
| \vfil\eject
|
| This is the end of the definition of
| \idx[pagemarkup=encapweird,end]{yet another term}.
|
| \readindexfile{i}
|
| \bye
`----

For the explanation of \encapweird, see "7.12 Page list and page range
parsers".

I'm guessing you're going to have lots of these indexing commands, and
it'd be a drag to repeat "pagemarkup=..." every time.  Below are the
defs I once used to simplify this:

,----
| % Helpers to create `main' terms.
| \def\main#1{{\bf #1}}%
| \def\sidxmain{\let\sidxmain at cmd\sidx \@getoptionalarg\@finsidxmain}%
| \def\idxmain{\let\sidxmain at cmd\idx \@getoptionalarg\@finsidxmain}%
| %
| \def\@finsidxmain{%
|   \ifx\@optionalarg\empty
|     \toks@={[pagemarkup=main]}%
|   \else
|     \toks@=\expandafter{\expandafter[\@optionalarg,pagemarkup=main]}%
|   \fi
|   \expandafter\sidxmain at cmd\the\toks@
| }%
`----

The idea here is to embed "pagemarkup=..." into the option lists of
\sidx and \idx, so that you can still add other modifiers (like
"begin" and "end"), but don't have to write "pagemarkup=..." every
time.

HTH,
Oleg