i've just explored the xindy web site, and, while i've found it very
informative and interesting, i couldn't find anything to help with
my problem.
wearing my ams technical and author support hat, i am trying to answer
a question from an author of a book being submitted to ams concerning
how to prepare the index. he is using ams-tex, which has no indexing
capability, but is willing to prepare the data manually. he asked,
Do you or your people know/have a macro package for formatting
indices? I know there is one in LaTeX, but I would like to
look at alternatives, particularly in AMSTeX.
we have no facilities in ams-tex, nor any plan for providing them,
so i will have to tell him that his index will have to be typeset
by latex -- but i wanted to give him an alternative for the actual
processing, and thought of xindy. however, i have been unable to
find sample input and output files. it really doesn't help just
to know that a makeindex-style input file will work, and be processed
by makeindex4. i would like to send him a few actual examples.
i have learned from looking through the xindy mail archive that
there are some .tex files that do provide examples, but i haven't
been able to find a link to them, and i really don't want to have
to download the entire package from ctan or the web site just to
look at the examples. (the author will be providing camera-ready
copy, so we don't need to install the package here -- yet.)
another person writing to this list also asked for examples (the
thread was "where does the raw file come from?), and was pointed
to the .tex files and makeindex4, but it seemed to be tacitly
assumed that he already had the package.
so it looks like i'll be advising this author to take a look at
both makeindex and xindy, but without any comparative details
that i really would have liked to be able to provide.
please do make these examples a little easier to find, to help
people who are exploring and advising, rather than undertaking
to use the package directly.
-- barbara beeton
p.s. if a cc of any response could be send to my e-mail address,
i'd appreciate it. i have no need to subscribe to the list, and have
been warned that the archive may not be complete.