X-VM-v5-Data: ([nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil] ["2120" "Sun" "7" "February" "93" "11:36:43" "+0000" "Dominik Wujastyk" "ucgadkw@UCL.AC.UK" nil "47" "Re: vol-task.tex updated; coordinator added for Makeindex" "^Date:" nil nil "2"]) Return-Path: Received: from sc.ZIB-Berlin.DE (mailserv) by dagobert.ZIB-Berlin.DE (4.1/SMI-4.0/1.9.92 ) id AA23396; Sun, 7 Feb 93 12:37:32 +0100 Received: from vm.urz.Uni-Heidelberg.de (vm.hd-net.uni-heidelberg.de) by sc.ZIB-Berlin.DE (4.1/SMI-4.0-sc/19.6.92) id AA29192; Sun, 7 Feb 93 12:37:30 +0100 Message-Id: <9302071137.AA29192@sc.zib-berlin.dbp.de> Received: from DHDURZ1 by vm.urz.Uni-Heidelberg.de (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 9013; Sun, 07 Feb 93 12:38:22 CET Received: from DHDURZ1 by DHDURZ1 (Mailer R2.08 R208004) with BSMTP id 9755; Sun, 07 Feb 93 12:38:20 CET Received: from DHDURZ1 by DHDURZ1 (Mailer R2.08 R208004) with BSMTP id 9753; Sun, 07 Feb 93 12:38:18 CET Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project Date: Sun, 7 Feb 93 11:36:43 +0000 From: Dominik Wujastyk Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project To: Multiple Recipients of Subject: Re: vol-task.tex updated; coordinator added for Makeindex Status: R X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 944 It's great to know that work on bringing Makeindex into the fold of TeX friends is going forward with David Love. A couple of points and queries in this regard: Since Makeindex is already written in C, it seems obvious that it should be ported to CWEB. I hope that nobody thinks that "Rewrite of Makeindex in WEB" means Pascal WEB. This would be a complete waste of time, and a gross misunderstanding of the WEB idea. I'm probably "running through open doors" on this, but I just wanted to be sure. Secondly, I believe the most urgent need regard to Makeindex is to clarify it's current status, and push out a universal new version. In other words, Joachim has done two important versions, and these should be made official, and released. Firstly, his 2.11 which dramatically improved memory management. It is clear from messages in comp.text.tex that many people are still using 2.09, and can only sort tiny indexes (I am particularly thinking of micro users). Makeindex 2.11 has now made it into the official EmTeX release, but again, not everyone may have been keeping up with emTeX upgrades, especially since it is not always publicly clear when upgrades take place -- Eberhard always mentions it on the net of course, but you really have to look at the dates of the files at Stuttgart to know whether you need to upgrade one or other of the ZIP files. Finally, the question of Makeindex 3.0.8. This exists, and includes Joachim's *very important* sorting and multilingual extensions. But I don't know that Joachim has ever made this version public. (I have a copy.) These extensions are extremely powerful, useful, and have a direct bearing on BibTeX. It would be absurd if BibTeX and Makeindex handled custom sorting differently, and since Joachim's extensions are powerful, general, and already written, I think they should be merged into BibTeX as they are. (All subject to a discussion of Joachim's paper on his methods, and an agreement that this approach is suitable; I think it is.) To sum up: 1/ CWEB 2/ Public official promotion of ver. 2.11 3/ Public official release of 3.0.8 Dominik