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

[Nick Dokos <nicholas.dokos@hp.com>]

Robert Goldman <rpgoldman@sift.info> wrote:

> I was trying to make an index in latex export and found that it was very
> difficult to make it work.  I wonder if this could be simplified.
> Here's what I had to do:
> 
> 1.  put \makeindex and \usepackage{makeidx} in latex export header [no
> big deal]
> 2.  put in \index commands (I don't /believe/ #+INDEX works, but I could
> be wrong)
> 3.  Put a \printindex in the end. [again, no big deal]
> 4.  Modify the org-latex-to-pdf-process to
> 
> ("pdflatex -interaction nonstopmode -output-directory %o %f" "makeindex
> -o %b.ind %b.idx" "pdflatex -interaction nonstopmode -output-directory
> %o %f" "pdflatex -interaction nonstopmode -output-directory %o %f")
> 
> [This was /somewhat/ of a big deal.  Suggest we add support for indexing
> as a built-in option, like bibtex...]
> 

Maybe you can try the texi2dvi option (I think it runs makeindex), but
texi2dvi did have a bug that has caused problems here in the past:
that's the reason it's not the default setting for
org-latex-to-pdf-process. If you run into the bug but still want to try
texi2dvi anyway, see

  http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-texinfo/2010-03/msg00032.html

for the fix Karl Berry applied to the development sources.

> 5.  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 haven't had the problem, primarily because I haven't used bibtex
through org yet :-) But bibtex should exhibit the same problem: the
bibtex change predated the makeindex one. Maybe bibtex is only called
with a relative path (if that's the case, then the same method should
cure makeindex as well). BTW, ".." is not allowed in the relative path:
you can only use subdirectories of the current directory.

Nick