Re: Feature request: multilevel indexing for TeX

[Gavin Smith]

On Mon, Feb 25, 2019 at 07:01:04AM -0700, address@hidden wrote:
> So why not just make it work with @cindex?  Or do we really need
> a new command?

Existing index entries may have commas in them.

The existing \primary macro does not take a page argument.  This could 
be used to give you:

  coffee makers
     electric ........... 32

To get

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

you would use \entry instead of \primary.

See attached files: these work with the current texinfo.tex.

For subtopics, maybe the interface could be:

@cindex coffee makers @subtopic{electric}

and maybe for an extra level, it could be

@cindex coffee makers @subtopic{electric} @subsubtopic{pink}

or even just

@cindex coffee makers @subtopic{electric} @subtopic{pink}

(if that is easy to implement in TeX).

This would follow the pattern of the @sortas command.

Another idea:

@cindex coffee makers @sub electric @sub pink

Or maybe:

@cindex coffee makers @subtopic{electric @subtopic{pink}}

which would allow e.g.

@cindex coffee makers @subtopic{electric @subtopic{pink} @sortas{aaa}}

I remember there were problems with the positioning of @sortas: I'd like 
to see if they could be fixed.

There may be LaTeX packages that deal with similar situations; maybe we 
could take a clue from their interface.

> Could we do \tertiary also? Or is that asking too much?

I don't see why not, it would just require more sorting logic in 
texindex.

> How do we move forward?

Think of more problems that might occur and send mail about them.  Wait 
for me to implement it, or learn enough TeX and Perl, and enough about 
the Texinfo codebase to implement it yourself.  Otherwise it is quite 
likely I will get to this some time in the next month.

Thanks.

test.tex
Description: TeX document

test.cps
Description: Text document