Re: [help-texinfo] Generate an index of texinfo manual

[Karl Berry]

    lengthy complicated descriptions of index types and etc.

The manual describes how to write the index entries in a manual in the
first place.
    
    Perhaps this means something is wrong with my
    installation of texinfo?

Apparently.  There is an index (node named "Index") in my installed gawk
info file, and my Emacs Info (21.3) recognizes it.  It is kind of hard
to imagine how the Info file got created without one.

    How can I create an index so that pressing `i' in gawk manual allows
    me to do an index search?

The simplest way is to use the gawk.info that comes with the gawk
distribution.

If you want to regenerate it for some reason, you can run makeinfo
gawk.texinfo in the gawk sources (doc/ subdir).

I'm not sure what you're expecting, but FYI, there is no way to add an
index to an existing Info file, since the information isn't there; the
index is created by running makeinfo on the Texinfo source file for the
manual.

Hope this helps.

karl