[XeTeX] MakeIndex

[Yves Codet]

Hello.

Le 14 juin 06, à 16:22, Will Robertson a écrit :

> Although people *have* written sorting algorithms in TeX, so I wonder
> why no-one's implemented an in-TeX indexing thing. Computers are fast
> enough these days, and it would mean no extra recompilations to
> include the index in the document. It's surely no harder than the
> tricks LaTeX and ConTeXt get up to to perform their other tasks :)

Nice. If somebody wants to improve his programming skills it might be a 
good exercise.

Apparently there's no hope on Xindy's side. I found a few messages on 
the Web confirming that there's no binary for the Macintosh and saying 
that it's no beginner's task to compile one from source.

I had a look at my .ind file, it looks like this:

   \item \emph{Paramārthasāra}, 3
   \item \emph{Spandaśāstra} (I 3), 5
   \item \emph{anuttara} ‘Unsurpassable [Absolute]’, 4
   \item \emph{anuttara} ‘unsurpassable’, 4
   \item \emph{avasthā} ‘states [of consciousness]’, 5
   \item \emph{cidghana} ‘mass of consciousness’, 3

Is it very difficult to sort such a list according to a predefined 
order and is there no Perl or Python script which could do that?

Another naive question. MakeIndex must have somewhere a list 
instructing it about alphabetical order. If it's not compiled with the 
binary it sould be possible to customise it. If it is, perhaps the 
binary can be compiled with a customised list. Any clue?

Best wishes,

Yves