[tex-eplain] Indexing and how to determine file dependencies

[Greg Black]

john@wexfordpress.net (who doesn't seem to know how to control
line lengths sensibly in his mailer) wrote:

> Your incorrect assumption is that the make program has a
> useful function to perform in the index creation process. IMHO
> it does not.

This is an absurd claim, probably based on ignorance of how to
use make.  I have a number of projects that produce books of
several hundred pages, with indexes and bibliographies.  They
all use between fifteen and thirty TeX source files and are
accompanied by a flock of auxiliary files produced by TeX,
makeindex, bibtex, etc.  I have managed the production of these
documents with make for many years and recommend it strongly as
a most useful tool for this purpose.