On Mon, Apr 27, 2026 at 02:48:23PM +0300, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > From: Gavin Smith <[email protected]>
> > Date: Sun, 26 Apr 2026 22:01:37 +0100
> > Cc: [email protected]
> >
> > I remember that the convention of merging index entries with the
> > same sort key was very old (from when I looked at this before, several
> > years ago), but I thought we could reconsider this, as I do not actually
> > see any advantage of merging the entries.
> >
> > Does anyone have an opinion on this?
>
> Isn't this what causes the Index to have stuff like
>
> Foo bar.......................................42, 142, 442
>
> rather than
>
> Foo bar.......................................42
> Foo bar.......................................142
> Foo bar.......................................442
>
> That is, if the same subject is mentioned in several places, have on
> cumulative entry for it in the index with all the pages? If so, I
> see a clear advantage to merging the entries, at least for
> non-punctuation characters.
I propose that they only be merged if the index entry text is identical.
Thus, the following two index entries should be merged:
@cindex Foo bar
@cindex Foo bar
However, the following index entries should be distinct:
@cindex Foo bar
@cindex Foo @code{bar}
@cindex Foo @command{bar}
@cindex Föö bar
I notice in the NEWS file for Texinfo, in the section for 6.0, there
is:
* texindex:
. completely new implementation as a literate program using Texinfo
and (portable) awk (called TexiWeb Jr.), thanks to Arnold Robbins.
(Requires gawk 4.0+ if .twjr source is modified.)
. the -o (--output) is not supported, unless we hear of someone using it.
. duplicated sort keys with different display texts result in one
merged index entry, using the first display text.
. better sorting and parsing in unusual cases; most notably, { and }
characters can appear as initials.
Bullet point 3 is what I am talking about here.
