Use of indexing tools

[Richard Kimberly Heck]

On 8/31/23 20:07, Andrew Parsloe wrote:
> I hadn't used the indexing tools for many (10?) years and had memories 
> of a tedious process but having now compiled another index, the 
> process is vastly improved -- with only one quibble: not enough 
> built-in shortcuts.
>
> 1. The index-insert lfunction needs a shortcut.

Since so many the single-key shortcuts are taken, I just use Alt-I+d, 
which activates the Insert menu, then uses the menu accelerator.

> 2. Once in an index inset, pressing Return to create a subentry is 
> exactly right, but highlights the desirability of having shortcuts for 
> both see and see also references. (I found I inserted most of these 
> 'in a batch' after looking at the first draft of the index.)
>
> I assigned my own shortcuts built around ctrl+; for index-insert, 
> ctrl+shift+; to insert see refs and ctrl+alt+; to insert see also refs 
> (the mnemonic is Shift for See, and ALt for ALso). In fact the 
> shortcuts were more complicated to take account of different 
> situations (inset filled with a word or not, word selected or not, 
> word accepatable or not), in the course of which I found myself 
> wanting to put a command-sequence inside command-alternatives. Is this 
> possible? (Riki? -- I see "rgh" introduced command-alternatives.)

I don't know if that would work. One problem, likely, is that it's hard 
to know when the command-sequence has ended and something else has 
started with the current syntax. That could be fixed. But a second and 
more serious problem is that the status checking for command sequences 
is somewhat limited. If I remember right, we only check the first 
action. The problem is that later actions may depend upon that one, 
i.e., not be active themselves until it has been completed, and we can't 
check that.

Riki