This is not really a "proposal" (I do not know how this should be implemented) but a starting point for a discussion.
Indexes and Table of Contents have several limitations on Writer. The most obvious is the inability to honour certain formatting on the headings (for example, if you insert a subindex on the heading, it will show as normal text on the TOC): https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=30732 For most situations there is a "work around" by using Linux Libertine G or Linux Biolinum G with "TeX mode" enabled, but this do not help if you need a Greek character as super index, or if you need italics for a particular, technical word (quite common in biology or chemistry). Another related issue: character in index entry dialog http://openoffice.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=106199 There are also problems with formatting: tabstops on TOC are no fully functional (do not support right and middle alignment) https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=32360 But there are other situations on which indexes are *very* flawed, specially for academic use. This issue: Allowing more than one Alphabetical Index http://openoffice.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=6401 was filled for OOo more than nine years ago and make Writer almost unusable on several scientific applications: it is quite common to have an index for Authors and another for Keywords, for example, and that cannot be accomplished on Writer because only one "user index" is allowed. Yes, you can use one index and several keys to simulate more than one index... but you can do that only if those indexes goes one after the other on the same page, which it is not really the most common layout... Another issue: Alphabetical Indexes cross-reference http://openoffice.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=104691 Copy/pasting the example on the issue, on Writer it is not possible to get the following: Beijing......see China Belgium...........p 8-10 China.............p 27-29 Greenland.........p 12-14 Madrid.......see Spain Spain.............p 18-31 i.e., the famous "see" and "see also" entries on large indexes. This do not only hinder Writer capabilities, but also rise compatibility issues because Word offers this ability. Another one: Alphabetical index: controlling sorting http://openoffice.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=114115 following one of the examples on the issue, it is not possible to list the entry "Nouvelle Vague" movement under N instead of "... ... and so on. Note that the listed issues link to another related issues as well... So I think a complete redesign of the indexes inside Writer is badly needed. Maybe if we agree on the needed features and how those features should be implemented we can build together a nice feature request :) Cheers Ricardo -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to [email protected] Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/design/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
