Re: [help-texinfo] Index entries for "@command" & Co.

[Tim Landscheidt]

address@hidden (Karl Berry) wrote:

>     but to me texinfo.fn looked like it is generated by code in
>     texinfo.tex

> Certainly true.  I thought we were talking about Unicode sorting here,
> not the indexed Texinfo commands lacking @.

> Anyway, the problem in this case is not so much the implementation but
> that there is no user-level way to specify a sort key.  I'm not happy at
> the idea of making up a new command like @findexwithsortkey.  However, I
> guess we could do a new command used within the indexing commands, as in
> @findex @sortkey{command} @@command

> (Patrice, wdyt?)

> For now, it remains on the TODO list ...

@sortkey{} is fine with me.  I just remembered why I prefer
it to changing the collation: In German (and probably other
languages as well), there are different collations for lists
of words and lists of names.  In a dictionary, "Atem" is
sorted before "Ätna" as the "Ä" is sorted as "A", while in a
phonebook, "Ä" is sorted as "Ae", thus "Atem" sorting after
"Ätna".  The Austrians add some more rules to this
(cf. http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphabetische_Sortierung).

  This would not only require texinfo to allow setting the
collation for a particular index, but also that these colla-
tions are installed on the user's system.  For example -
AFAIK - glibc only supports the dictionary collation for
German which raises the bar immensely.

Tim