Dear LyX devs,
Makeindex by default separates the locators (page numbers) from the
heading with a comma and a space:
some heading, 8, 23, 25
My authority when I made my living as a freelance back-of-book index
compiler was "Indexing from A to Z" by Hans H. Wellisch (H.W. Wilson
Co., 1991). Wellisch acknowledges that some still recommend the comma
(Chicago Manual of Style for instance) but continues (p.224), " ... BS
3700, 7.1.4.1 recommends leaving only a space, and the International
Standard ISO 999, 9.1.4.1 does the same. Leaving a space of two
characters or 1 em instead of typing or setting a comma is ... more
logical (the locators follow a heading as an integral part of an entry,
whereas a comma seems to imply that there is a break between heading and
locators) ... and is, therefore, recommended." To my eye it also looks
better:
some heading 8, 23, 25
It also means that in an inverted heading, the reader doesn't have to
distinguish two different uses of the commas in the heading as in
indexing, the art of, 8, 23, 25 (comma+space, bad)
indexing, the art of 8, 23, 25 (two spaces, good)
or even three different uses as in
Saint, St, etc., filing order of, 8, 23, 25
Andrew
PS. Even better than changing the default (to a space of 1 em, or
perhaps, protected space + space) would be to also make this more easily
settable by the user. This can be done at present by creating different
style files and putting them in one's personal texmf tree, then adding
-s mystyle.ist to the option slot in Tools > Preferences > Output >
Latex > Index generation > Processor, but it's an obstacle course for a
user doing it for the first time. (The voice of experience: I've just
done it for the first time. As well as twospace.ist, I've also created
dotfill.ist with dotfill separating headings from locators. A sparse
index -- few locators per entry -- like that for the User's Guide looks
particularly elegant with the latter.)
