LaTeX error when building a file from xindy documentation

[jfbu]

>   
> echo '\f' is not portable. On your shell (zsh I imagine) it outputs a
> form feed instead of the literal \f.

I considered this but do not handle Makefiles on a daily basis,
(and would need some refresh on their quoting rules for shell commands)
and the echo commands being "echoed" (sic) correctly to my Terminal,
I could check that executing them manually by copy paste worked fine.
(the \f being quoted).

My shell is bash

$ echo $SHELL
/bin/bash


> which seemed to work for me. r54168.

confirmed. 

> Fortunately there are no other \f (or \n or \r) sequences in echo
> commands there, or anywhere in the source tree that I could
> find.

Some 2 additional changes are needed:  two \chapter lines are
missing from the output alphabets-inc.tex file

Indeed

source/utils/xindy/xindy-src/make-rules/alphabets/Makefile.in

contains

	echo '\chapter{Cyrillic scripts}' >>$@

but the \c seems to also create a problem

I replaced this line following your template by

	printf '\%s{Cyrillic scripts}\n' "chapter" >>$@

Similarly

	printf '\%s{Latin scripts}\n' "chapter" >>$@

replaces line 1017 of Makefile.in

	echo '\chapter{Latin scripts}' >>$@

I confirm that after these two changes the tex file does contain
the intended \chapter lines. And the pdflatex run producing
alphabets-doc.pdf completes fine.

Best, Jean-François