Use of indexing tools

[Andrew Parsloe]

On 2/09/2023 4:03 am, Richard Kimberly Heck wrote:
> 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

Thanks for the response. In relation to  "Alt-I+d" I see that 
accelerator underlining depends on activating the menu with Alt. 
Clicking on Insert in the menu bar doesn't show the accelerators. After 
decades of computer use, I had never noticed this little quirk before 
(but I see the User's Guide mentions it).

Andrew