[texhax] Hyphenation problem with makeindex

[Oleg Katsitadze]

Hi Rodolfo,

On Thu, Mar 29, 2007 at 08:47:20PM +0200, Rodolfo Medina wrote:
> It seems that makeindex cannot hyphenate words: it produces an overfull box
> instead of hyphenating.  I broke the word with: `ex\-ample', as usual in plain
> TeX, but nothing.

Makeindex does not hyphenate words.  All it does is take an input file
(.idx), sort the entries and produce an output file (.ind), which
contains nothing but a set of macros with index entries.  When you
input the .ind file, how the words are hyphenated depends on how these
macros are implemented.  Usually, the index is set in two narrow
columns and the lines have very little stretchability/shrinkability,
so index macros might be designed to set the entries in the
ragged-right justification.  In short, the behavior you observe
depends on the definitions of the actual macros you use to typeset the
index, so you might want to check there (or tell us which macros you
use, preferably with a minimal/small example to work with).

HTH,
Oleg