[texhax] makeindex

Zbigniew Nitecki zbigniew.nitecki at tufts.edu
Thu Oct 28 15:08:17 CEST 2004


I am having trouble understanding the behavior of the index-writing 
program.

In a book i am writing, I have a command which I use when printing 
definitions in the text:
	\newcommand{\deffont}[1]{\textbf{#1}\index{#1}}
so that every time I define a term it gets written to the index.   This 
appears to work fine, except that if the term involves mathematical 
text as well as text, I need to boldface the math text by means of 
\boldsymbol in the entry.  Since I don't want to have index entries in 
boldface, I devised a variant of the above
	\newcomman{\deffontcustom}[2]{\textbf{#1}\index{#2}}
where I try to use the key at visual format in the second version:  for 
example, to index the
term $\mathbb{R}$ (which I actually generate via my macro \Reals{}) I 
write (in the text)
	\deffontcustom{$\boldsymbol{\Reals}$}{R@$\mathbb{R}$}
My problem is this:  when I do this, the entry seems to disappear.

What am I doing wrong?

And an ancillary question: is there a single command which will write 
ALL text to which it is applied in a bold series (ie, a command which 
would take an input like "$x$ is a number"
and print it as $\boldsymbol{x}$\textbf{ is a number}?

Finally another question regarding makeindex's behavior.  I am using 
TeXShop (and perhaps should address this to Richard Koch);  naturally 
different sections of the book are different files, all with a common 
project root book.tex.  When I latex a given section, as it should, the 
program latex's the file book.tex (first saving the current file).  
When I then go to the "Typeset" menu and hit "Makeindex", I get the 
console telling me that the .id file has been written.  But then, when 
I hit the "Typeset" button on the pdf window, I don't get the latex, 
but I get the makeindex again.   Huh?

Zbigniew Nitecki
Department of Mathematics
Tufts University

telephones:
my office 	(617) 627-3843
dept. off.	(617) 627-3234
dept. fax	(617) 627-3966



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