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Feature request: multilevel indexing for TeX


From: arnold
Subject: Feature request: multilevel indexing for TeX
Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2019 03:08:30 -0700
User-agent: Heirloom mailx 12.5 7/5/10

Hi.

I have a feature request, please. It relates to indexing in texinfo.tex.
Packages like LaTeX and professional publishing packages provide for
multiple levels of index entries, usually up to three keys. For example

        coffee makers ..... 15, 21
           electric ........... 32
              pink ............ 45

I would very much like to see this available in texinfo.tex. In
the gawk manual I have up to three items, separated by commas; if
more are needed for what I want to say, I use @comma{}.

I took a look a texinfo.tex to see what's there for this kind of thing.
I'm not at all a TeX hacker, but it looks like there's some half-completed
support for two levels of items (not three).  Sort of like someone
thought about it, but it doesn't seem to have been carried through.

For backwards compatibility, this would probably have to be done as
a new command, something like

        @cindex2 {coffee makers}{electic}{pink}

or more likely:

        @cindex2{coffee makers, electic, pink}

(Yes, that's a bad name, it's just an example for discussion.)

I suspect that makeinfo could rewrite

        @cindex2 {coffee makers}{electic}{pink}

as:

        @cindex coffee makers, electic, pink

and things would be happy for Info and HTML; DocBook could certainly
leverage multilevel indexing since it has something like

        <indexterm><primary>coffee makers</primary>
                   <secondary>electric</secondary>
                   <tertiary>pink</tertiary></indexterm>

I would be willing to update texindex to support multiple sort
keys if this would help.  Unfortunately, I don't think I can help
with the TeX part or the makeinfo part.

Does all this make sense?  Is it something that can be added to
the TODO list?

Please cc me on replies, as I'm not on this list.

Much thanks!

Arnold



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