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# XINDY FAQ

## Or: <SF>xindy</SF> by Topic

## Roger Kehr

### Computer Science Department, Technical University of Darmstadt

and

## Joachim Schrod

### Joachim Schrod Net & Publication Consultance GmbH

$Revision: 1.2 $, $Date: 2004/05/24 21:43:16 $, for xindy version 2.2

The <SF>xindy</SF> FAQ presents answers to questions that are not adequately covered in other parts of the documentation, or are hard to find. The FAQ has been constructed from the <SF>xindy</SF> by Topic manual. The most up-to-date version of this FAQ can be obtained from the <SF>xindy</SF> homepage at http://www.xindy.org/doc/faq.html.

While the content of this document is still valid, it has not been updated in years and doesn't describe new developments. In particular, it doesn't mention the many languages that are supported by Thomas Henlich's make-rules system, and also doesn't know anything about the new commands that got introduced with the "LaTeX Companion Release". So, caveat. We don't want to throw out the document, though, since it still contains lots of useful information that's not available elsewhere.

## 1. General Questions

- 1.1 Why a completely new indexing tool? `makeindex` works fine!
- 1.2 I'm an old `makeindex` wizard. What does <SF>xindy</SF> offer that `makeindex` doesn't?

## 2. <SF>xindy</SF> Usage

- 2.1 I don't want to write style files. How can I proceed?
- 2.2 How do I use `makeindex4`?
- 2.3 How works `makeindex4`?

## 3. <SF>xindy</SF> and LaTeX

- 3.1 What is `tex2xindy`?
- 3.2 What LaTeX-package should I use in conjunction with xindy?

## 4. Style Files

- 4.1 Eventually, I decided to write my first index style. How can I start?
- 4.2 How to write my first index style?
- 4.3 How works the actual key feature of `makeindex` with <SF>xindy</SF>?
- 4.4 I want to process an index for my native language. What must I do?
- 4.5 In my index the capitalized words appear after the lowercase words. Why?
- 4.6 In my index there are no letter groups, yet!
- 4.7 How can I get rid of any formatting information in the keyword?
- 4.8 In my index the word -foo appears before bar. What must I do?
- 4.9 I want to use letter ordering instead of word ordering in my index.
- 4.10 My document does not have page numbers, but a different scheme. What must I do?
- 4.11 I don't want to have ranges in my index. What can I do?
- 4.12 I want to markup ranges of different length differently. How do I accomplish this?
- 4.13 I need to suppress some of the markup tags. How can I do this?
- 4.14 Whats it all about those cross references?
- 4.15 The keyword mappings don't work as expected!
- 4.16 I'm totally confused by the markup scheme!
- 4.17 What editor should I use when writing xindy style files?

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