[XeTeX] arabic

[Ross Moore]

Hi Vafa, Houda, Kamal, Ulrike and others,


On 23/10/2010, at 1:43 PM, Vafa Khalighi wrote:

> I disagree. If makeindex was so perfect, why would someone spends lots of time inventing a new system.

Nobody said  makeindex  was perfect, just that it may be 
sufficient for the job at hand.

If the only problem is in representing the page-numbers using 
other than western digits, then this is certainly achievable.
(See below for the kind of configuration that is needed.)

On the other hand, Makeindex  would have difficulty sorting
the index entries automatically, according to rules
for non-latin scripts, unless there were extra sorting
tags provided with \index instances of the form
     \index{... at .....} 


> 
> For languages like Persian, Urdu, and other complex scripts, makeindex is not suitable and you have got to use xindy.

Until you have defined exactly what tasks are needed,
and how they need to fit with the workflow being employed, 
how can you presume to say what is suitable and what is not?

> 
> 
> -- 
> بسی رنج بردم در این سال سی         عَجَم زنده کردم بدین پارسی
> 

If the *only* problem is to deal with the page numbers
in the .ind  file, such as the OP gets using the defaults
for Makeindex; viz.

>>> \begin{theindex}
>>> 
>>>   \item test, 5
>>> 
>>>   \indexspace
>>> 
>>>   \item نمایه, 5
>>> 
>>> \end{theindex}

(Beware the RTL text may be confusing the appearance 
of the actual byte order here.)

You can configure to get the following instead:

>>>  \begin{theindex} 
>>>  
>>>   \item test, \pagenumstyled 5
>>> 
>>>   \indexspace
>>> 
>>>   \item نمایه, \pagenumstyled 5
>>> 
>>>  \end{theindex}


Now all that is needed is to define \pagenumstyled 
appropriately, to "read ahead" and adjust how the
page number is to be displayed.
Here is example (La)TeX coding that does this:

\RequirePackage{arabicnumbers}
\newcount\pageindcnt
\def\pagenumstyled{\afterassignment\dopagenumstyle\pageindcnt}
\def\dopagenumstyle{\arabicdigits{\number\pageindcnt}}



So how is the configuration achieved?

Use a customised .ist  file.
The following is minimal. It can be easily extended to cope 
with nested entries and headings for letter-ranges, etc.

>>> %%%%  start of file  myind.ist  %%%%%%%
>>> preamble
>>> "\\begin{theindex} \n "
>>> postamble
>>> "\n\n \\end{theindex}\n"
>>> delim_0   ", \\pagenumstyled "
>>> %%%%  end of  myind.ist  %%%%%%%


To use this the call to  Makeindex needs to be include
extra parameters; e.g.

  makeindex -s ./myind.ist -o test-arabe1.ind test-arabe1.idx

for a document named  test-arabe1.tex
This will load the customised .ist  file from 
the same directory as the document source.

Of course you could put it in another loaction that
 Makeindex will find, or you could adjust the TeXshop
command for Makeindex, or use a shell script, or ...

Do whatever fits best with your workflow.


Here is a neat way, using \write18  that keeps all of 
the coding together in your LaTeX document's preamble:


>>> \usepackage{makeidx}
>>> \RequirePackage{arabicnumbers}
>>> \newcount\pageindcnt
>>> \def\pagenumstyled{\afterassignment\dopagenumstyle\pageindcnt}
>>> \def\dopagenumstyle{\arabicdigits{\number\pageindcnt}}
>>> \immediate\write18{makeindex -s ./myind.ist -o test-arabe1.ind test-arabe1.idx}
>>> \makeindex



Note that the call to  'makeindex'  must come *before* the \makeindex ,
> 

so that it uses the  .idx  file from the previous LaTeX run.  
This is because \makeindex  is going to reset  test-arabe1.idx  as 
an output channel, to collect the index entries from the current run.


This example simply shows how to apply styles to the page numbers
in an index, generated using the  Makeindex  program.
There is no claim here that all possible problems with the use
of arabic digits and index entries are solved. For that, then
presumably Xindy has more appropriate methods.


Hope this helps,

	Ross


------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ross Moore                                       ross.moore at mq.edu.au 
Mathematics Department                           office: E7A-419      
Macquarie University                             tel: +61 (0)2 9850 8955
Sydney, Australia  2109                          fax: +61 (0)2 9850 8114
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