[tex-live] Changes for 2010?

[Joachim Schrod]

Norbert Preining wrote:
> On Mo, 19 Apr 2010, Simon Spiegel wrote:
>> And, of course, biber …
> 
>> An update to xindy would also be nice, since it currently has serious issues with hyperref.
> 
> But that has not been resolved by now???

No, this is not resolved. xindy and the current version of
hypperref are incompatible and will remain so for the forseeing future.

This incompatibility is documented (p.678 in TLC2, also explanation
of xindy/MakeIndex differences in xindy by topic), and it does not
only concern hyperref, but also memoir in some use cases. A problem
is that this documentation is not seen by most people, and if they
see it, the connotation is missing that this is relevant for
hyperref and memoir.

To make that clear: hypperref's linked index implementation works
only with MakeIndex, not with xindy; and to change that would
probably be a major enhancement in xindy. Well, maybe someone finds
a workaround, but I don't hold my breath for that. That's because
Heiko uses one feature of MakeIndex where xindy introduced an
incompatibility to implement other enhanced features.

For those who are interested: It's about the differing meaning of
`bbb' in \index{aaa|bbb}. In MakeIndex, this is an arbitrary string
that is output with a leading backslash. In xindy, `bbb' is a
`location class' that must be defined and where its processing can
be influenced. E.g., one may define if such `bbb' references are
dropped or additionaly mentioned when the same location appears in
another class or in a page range of another class. As an example:
If I have a page range 10-20, I may want to drop an index entry on
page 15 with location class `hint', but may want to introduce an
additional entry if the index entry has location class
`definition'. One can also define if location classes shall be
mixed, or if they shall be listed seperately. That's because in
xindy locations are structured objects where their semantic go
beyond mere page numbers, as in MakeIndex.

I.e., that current hypperref's index links don't work with xindy is
not a bug, it's the result of *intented* behaviour. It would be
nice if one could support hypperref's index links, but that would
be an enhancement, i.e., the introduction of a new feature
`location class attributes'. For now, if one wants to use hyperref
and xindy together, one has to turn off index links.

	Joachim

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Joachim Schrod				Email: jschrod at acm.org
Roedermark, Germany