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reftex: Index Support

 
 5 Index Support
 ***************
 
 LaTeX has builtin support for creating an Index.  The LaTeX core
 supports two different indices, the standard index and a glossary.  With
 the help of special LaTeX packages (‘multind.sty’ or ‘index.sty’), any
 number of indices can be supported.
 
    Index entries are created with the ‘\index{ENTRY}’ macro.  All
 entries defined in a document are written out to the ‘.aux’ file.  A
 separate tool must be used to convert this information into a nicely
 formatted index.  Tools used with LaTeX include ‘MakeIndex’ and ‘xindy’.
 
    Indexing is a very difficult task.  It must follow strict conventions
 to make the index consistent and complete.  There are basically two
 approaches one can follow, and both have their merits.
 
   1. Part of the indexing should already be done with the markup.  The
      document structure should be reflected in the index, so when
      starting new sections, the basic topics of the section should be
      indexed.  If the document contains definitions, theorems or the
      like, these should all correspond to appropriate index entries.
      This part of the index can very well be developed along with the
      document.  Often it is worthwhile to define special purpose macros
      which define an item and at the same time make an index entry,
      possibly with special formatting to make the reference page in the
      index bold or underlined.  To make RefTeX support for indexing
      possible, these special macros must be added to RefTeX’s
      configuration (Defining Index Macros).
 
   2. The rest of the index is often just a collection of where in the
      document certain words or phrases are being used.  This part is
      difficult to develop along with the document, because consistent
      entries for each occurrence are needed and are best selected when
      the document is ready.  RefTeX supports this with an _index phrases
      file_ which collects phrases and helps indexing the phrases
      globally.
 
    Before you start, you need to make sure that RefTeX knows about the
 index style being used in the current document.  RefTeX has builtin
 support for the default ‘\index’ and ‘\glossary’ macros.  Other LaTeX
 packages, like the ‘multind’ or ‘index’ package, redefine the ‘\index’
 macro to have an additional argument, and RefTeX needs to be configured
 for those.  A sufficiently new version of AUCTeX (9.10c or later) will
 do this automatically.  If you really don’t use AUCTeX (you should!),
 this configuration needs to be done by hand with the menu (‘Ref->Index
 Style’), or globally for all your documents with
 
      (setq reftex-index-macros '(multind))     or
      (setq reftex-index-macros '(index))
 

Menu

 
· Creating Index Entries           Macros and completion of entries.
· The Index Phrases File           A special file for global indexing.
· Displaying and Editing the Index The index editor.
· Builtin Index Macros             The index macros RefTeX knows about.
· Defining Index Macros                ... and macros it  doesn’t.
 

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