Re: [Groff] Creating an index with mom

[Keith Marshall]

On 22/04/14 18:31, Peter Schaffter wrote:
> I have an aversion to LISP so xindy is out (someone once remarked
> that LISP stands for Lost In Superfluous Parentheses), and I'm not
> well-versed about makeindex.  However, I'm thinking that if Denis
> has got indexing working with makeindex, perhaps the best route to
> go with mom would be to adapt the indexing facilities from -markup.
> 
> Denis, if you have any thoughts on this, I'd welcome them.

I'm not Denis, but FWIW, here's my 2p worth.

It seems clear that indexing cannot be accomplished entirely at the
macro level; some additional tools are required to compile the index,
and groff currently lacks such tools.  Reportedly, makeindex is such a
tool, which is compatible with troff; would there be any mileage in
offering it as a component of a groff distribution?

It also seems clear that some macro level support for indexing is
required, to interoperate with the external index compiler; unless the
macros are trivial, would it not be more sensible to provide a generic
index.tmac implementation, which could then be exploited in conjunction
with *any* of the document styling macro packages, rather than making
them specific to mom, (or any other, in isolation)?

-- 
Regards,
Keith.