On Monday 16 August 2004 14:56, Helge Hafting wrote: > Careful now. _Only_ autoescaping will render impossible all > the stuff we do today with _ and | and \ and so on when writing index > entries. <huge snip>
Helge, You've made some very valid aruments. i wasn't at all aware that auto-escaping for indexes would cause so much trouble elsewhere - i was working under the assumption that people only put "plain text" into indexes. A decent workaround, given all of that, would simply be a patch for the docs which warn about this, because the current docs say NOTHING about any potentially illegal characters in index text, AND the index dialog will silently allow you to screw up your whole doc (i entered well over 100 index entries before i tried to export my index the first time. GRIEF!!!). > * Allow math editor in an index entry (My book on algorithm > complexity have an index entry for $\Omega$, for example. A math > paper might index lots of formulas. Chemistry uses _ a lot in > formulas too. > * Allow formatting like emphasize, bold and "character > styles" inside an index entry, i see the potential need to have these things, but i think we must agree that they are exceptional cases, not the norm. > The current system could use some warnings as well as a reference to > litterature on makeindex syntax . . . i'd be happy with the simple warning "character XXX in your index entry may not be legal", perhaps with a toggle to "not show this warning again [for this document]". Anything but SILENT failure. > >IMO a dialog box should not > >allow you to enter data which is itself illegal for the program the > >dialog is serving, especially when it *silently* does so. > > Well, a _ is a perfectly legal character in an index entry, when used > right. Example index entries that works fine: > foo\_bar > $C_2H_5OH$-(ethanol) i have come to see that, but it also seems like this is a minority case, and not what most people set out to do with index. i have seen here, though, that i was way off base by suggesting auto-escaping. A toggle for auto-escaping would be really cool, though, because i'm NEVER going to use math symbols in an index (i can barely do basic algebra, much less write equations). > I agree that the current way is not userfriendly, but don't _remove_ > existing possibilities just to make your own case easier. Understood. Thanks for sharing your insights! -- ----- [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://s11n.net "...pleasure is a grace and is not obedient to the commands of the will." -- Alan W. Watts
