Re: texinfo.tex indexing bug

[Aharon Robbins]

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