🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <MCGLK.92Apr9115838@bailey.cpac.washington.edu>
mcglk@cpac.washington.edu (Ken McGlothlen) writes about eplain:
>The only thing that it seems to be lacking is any sort of indexing.
>Before I go off and write one, has anyone already done so?


  A while back Samir Varma (varmint@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu) put out here a
general request for info on indexing packages.  I believe he found that
there were several things available for LaTeX but that support for Plain
TeX was somewhat lacking.  He also found a very nice program called
MakeIndex which can do the actual sorting, merging and such required for
making a truly good index.  MakeIndex can be configured for almost any
text processing markup language (including troff) but the default is set
for LaTeX.  Nonetheless it seemed to Samir (and seems to me) that
MakeIndex is the right way to produce a good index.

  Since I prefer to use Plain TeX (or extensions to it, like TeXsis) I
put together some simple macros for making an index using MakeIndex with
Plain TeX.  The best part is that with a little fancy footwork I was
able to make it possible to use MakeIndex in its default configuration!
You don't have to use any alternate "setup" file because you choose to use
Plain TeX.

  The macros are called index.tex, and I've made them available via
anonymous ftp from lifshitz.ph.utexas.edu (128.83.131.57) in the
directory texsis/index.  The comments at the begining of the file should
be enough to get you started.

  I suspect that these macros will work with eplain as well, but since
I've only got eplain up an running recently I have not been able to
completely test it.  I'd welcome any feedback from anyone using eplain.

  If you don't have MakeIndex it's also possible to take the raw index
output file produced by these macros and create the index "by hand."
However, MakeIndex is so good that you really should consider the extra
effort of getting it (not hard to install at all, I found).  I've
therefore also put in the ftp directory mentioned above a PostScript
copy of the paper "Index Preparation and Processing" by Chen and
Harrison, which describes the process of making an index and the basics
of MakeIndex, and a compressed tar version of the MakeIndex distribution.

  Those of you familiar with TeXsis will be happy to know that index.tex
will be included in the next release, and because of it the manual will
have a very nice index.  Nevertheless, for those who don't really care
about TeXsis, the index.tex macros can be used completly on their own
with just Plain TeX.

  Comments, suggestions or bugs can be sent to me or to
texsis@lifshitz.ph.utexas.edu 
-- 
Eric Myers		"Frankie say '\relax'"
		
Center for Relativity, Department of Physics, University of Texas at Austin
myers@emx.utexas.edu  |   myers@utaphy.bitnet   |   myers@ut-emx.UUCP