Re: Making an index in latex export --- surprisingly difficult

[Robert Goldman <rpgoldman@sift.info>]

On 4/26/11 Apr 26 -4:26 PM, Suvayu Ali wrote:
> On Tue, 26 Apr 2011 16:09:22 -0500
> Robert Goldman <rpgoldman@sift.info> wrote:
> 
>> The REAL big deal:  edit my texmf.cf file to break the security
>> protection of openout_any=p.  By default, makeindex will refuse to
>> open an absolute pathname.  But org-mode will only pass absolute
>> pathnames to makeindex (AFAICT).  Question:  it seems like bibtex
>> should suffer from this same restriction.  Has anyone had that
>> problem with it?
> 
> I did and no clean solution has been found yet.
> http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.orgmode/38247/focus=38562
> 
> HTH
> 

I looked at that thread and unfortunately it petered out (partly because
it went off into a different direction to solve an easier problem with
conflicting style files).

The last message from Eric Fraga states:

> Oh well, there goes that theory.  The web link you gave yesterday would seem to indicate that the problem is present if you invoke the bibtex command from another directory and this does not appear to be the case here.  Very strange.

It's not actually invoking the bibtex command from another directory,
AFAICT, but invoking the bibtex command on an argument that is an
/absolute/ pathname.  This is now forbidden for makeindex and bibtex (I
don't know if it's permitted for pdflatex or not, but I suspect it is,
since the pdflatex part of the export process is working --- pdflatex
may not honor openout_any=p).

I don't see why, per the discussion in the texlive distribution notes,
it should matter that you change the TEXMF pathname environment
variable, since makeindex isn't doing any metafonting!

I also don't see any obvious way for programs like org-mode to adapt to
this except possibly by explicitly changing their working directory to
be the working directory of the org files and then using relative
pathnames instead of absolute ones.  And I would like to say right now
that I don't have the FOGGIEST idea what that would mean on Windows,
which seems to think about working directories somewhat differently!

Best,
r