Hi. > As a hypothetical question, if I rewrote texindex in awk and it > functioned as a drop-in replacement, would you take it? > > I don't see why not. It would surely be easier to maintain. > > If you go that route, one thing I would really like to do is change the > .?? index files to use @ as the escape character instead of \. So it > would be great if a new texinfo could accept either one, could simply > detect from the first line, I think.
No problem. > I already changed the aux and toc, but not the index, precisely because > tinkering with texindex is not on my list of Fun Things To Do. > > If so, would you require fully portable awk, or could I take > advantage of stuff that is only in gawk? > > I wish I could say yes to gawk-only, but I think fully-portable is the > way to go. Texinfo gets installed on old systems, I know to my sorrow, > and if it only worked with gawk (even old gawk), that would just raise a > furor. Just don't want to go down that road. I was guessing as much, which is why I asked. For my definition, "fully portable" still means "new" awk - with functions, etc, as described by the 1988 awk book. I have some old versions of BWK awk that can be used for testing. (I think as far back as ~ 1993; I'd have to check.) To that end, can I assume that there will never be both \primary and \entry for the same key in a texindex input file? It looks like texinfo.tex defines a @cindexsub command, but this is undocumented? How would it be used? Thanks, Arnold
