[Tex/LaTex] Glossaries: list of abbreviations (alphabetically ordered) and list of symbols (ordered by usage)

glossaries

For my thesis, I would like to generate a list of abbreviations that is ordered alphabetically as well as list of symbols that is ordered by the first appearance of each symbol in the thesis. Having done some research, it seems to me that the
glossaries package is the best package for this.

I can generate a list of abbreviations ordered alphabetically like this:

\documentclass[a4paper,twoside]{book}
\usepackage[acronym]{glossaries}

\newacronym{ny1}{NY}{New York}
\newacronym{la1}{LA}{Los Angeles}
\newacronym{un1}{UN}{United Nations}
\makeglossaries

\begin{document}
\printglossary[type=\acronymtype,title=Abbreviations]

\gls{ny1} \gls{la1} and \gls{un1} are abbreviations that should 
appear alphabetically in the list of abbreviations.

\end{document}

I can also generate a list of symbols ordered by their first appearance in the document like this:

\documentclass[a4paper,twoside]{book}
\usepackage[symbols,nogroupskip,nonumberlist,sort=use]{glossaries-extra}

\glsxtrnewsymbol[description={position}]{x}{\ensuremath{x}}
\glsxtrnewsymbol[description={velocity}]{v}{\ensuremath{v}}
\glsxtrnewsymbol[description={acceleration}]{a}{\ensuremath{a}}
\glsxtrnewsymbol[description={time}]{t}{\ensuremath{t}}
\glsxtrnewsymbol[description={force}]{F}{\ensuremath{F}}
\makenoidxglossaries

\begin{document}
\printnoidxglossary[type=symbols,style=long,title={List of Symbols}]

Reference symbols: $\gls{F}$, $\gls{t}$, $\gls{x}$, $\gls{v}$, $\gls{a}$.

\end{document}

However, merging both lists into one document is not straightforward for me as there is a clash between \usepackage[acronym]{glossaries} and \usepackage[symbols,nogroupskip,nonumberlist,sort=use]{glossaries-extra} when I try to load both packages. What is the best way to merge both lists into one document (abbreviations, alphabetically ordered and symbols, ordered by first appearance)?

Thank you

Best Answer

The glossaries-extra package internally loads glossaries so you don't need to load both. The "noidx" method is quick for order of use/definition but slow and inefficient for alphabetic sorting, so glossaries-extra provides a hybrid method where you can use makeindex/xindy for the glossaries that need alphabetical ordering and \printnoidxglossary for order of use/definition. With glossaries-extra, there's an optional argument to \makeglossaries that's a comma-separated list of glossary labels indicating which glossaries need processing by makeindex/xindy. These ones are displayed with \printglossary and the others are displayed with \printnoidxglossary. (Note that there's no \makenoidxglossary.)

\documentclass[a4paper,twoside]{book}
\usepackage[abbreviations,symbols,nogroupskip,nonumberlist]{glossaries-extra}

\makeglossaries[abbreviations]

\glsxtrnewsymbol[description={position}]{x}{\ensuremath{x}}
\glsxtrnewsymbol[description={velocity}]{v}{\ensuremath{v}}
\glsxtrnewsymbol[description={acceleration}]{a}{\ensuremath{a}}
\glsxtrnewsymbol[description={time}]{t}{\ensuremath{t}}
\glsxtrnewsymbol[description={force}]{F}{\ensuremath{F}}

\newabbreviation{ny1}{NY}{New York}
\newabbreviation{la1}{LA}{Los Angeles}
\newabbreviation{un1}{UN}{United Nations}

\begin{document}
\printnoidxglossary[type=symbols,sort=use,style=long,title={List of Symbols}]
\printglossary[type=abbreviations]

Reference symbols: $\gls{F}$, $\gls{t}$, $\gls{x}$, $\gls{v}$, $\gls{a}$.

\gls{ny1} \gls{la1} and \gls{un1} are abbreviations that should
appear alphabetically in the list of abbreviations.

\end{document}

The build process still uses the makeglossaries script, which picks up from the .aux file which glossaries need processing, so in this case it will skip the list of symbols.

The list of symbols is in the order of use:

The list of abbreviations is in alphabetical order:

If you prefer to use \newacronym instead of \newabbreviation you need to replace the abbreviations package option with acronyms (or acronym) and set the abbreviation style:

\documentclass[a4paper,twoside]{book}
\usepackage[acronym,symbols,nogroupskip,nonumberlist]{glossaries-extra}

\makeglossaries[\acronymtype]

\glsxtrnewsymbol[description={position}]{x}{\ensuremath{x}}
\glsxtrnewsymbol[description={velocity}]{v}{\ensuremath{v}}
\glsxtrnewsymbol[description={acceleration}]{a}{\ensuremath{a}}
\glsxtrnewsymbol[description={time}]{t}{\ensuremath{t}}
\glsxtrnewsymbol[description={force}]{F}{\ensuremath{F}}

\setabbreviationstyle[acronym]{long-short}

\newacronym{ny1}{NY}{New York}
\newacronym{la1}{LA}{Los Angeles}
\newacronym{un1}{UN}{United Nations}

\begin{document}
\printnoidxglossary[type=symbols,sort=use,style=long,title={List of Symbols}]
\printglossary[type=\acronymtype]

Reference symbols: $\gls{F}$, $\gls{t}$, $\gls{x}$, $\gls{v}$, $\gls{a}$.

\gls{ny1} \gls{la1} and \gls{un1} are abbreviations that should
appear alphabetically in the list of abbreviations.

\end{document}

Here's a completely different approach where the terms are defined in .bib files.

abbreviations.bib:

% Encoding: UTF-8

@abbreviation{ny1,
  short = {NY},
  long = {New York}
}

@abbreviation{la1,
  short = {LA},
  long = {Los Angeles}
}

@abbreviation{un1,
  short = {UN},
  long = {United Nations}
}

If you already have an existing file containing \newabbreviation (or \newacronym) you can convert it to a .bib with convertgls2bib, which is supplied with bib2gls.

symbols.bib:

% Encoding: UTF-8

@symbol{x,
  name = {\ensuremath{x}},
  description = {position}
}

@symbol{v,
  name = {\ensuremath{v}},
  description = {velocity}
}

@symbol{a,
  name = {\ensuremath{a}},
  description = {acceleration}
}

@symbol{t,
  name = {\ensuremath{t}},
  description = {time}
}

@symbol{F,
  name = {\ensuremath{F}},
  description = {force}
}

Again, if you already have an existing file containing \glsxtrnewsymbol you can convert it to a .bib file with convertgls2bib.

Document (test.tex):

\documentclass[a4paper,twoside]{book}
\usepackage[record,% using bib2gls
 abbreviations,symbols]{glossaries-extra}

\GlsXtrLoadResources[
  src={abbreviations},% data in abbreviations.bib
  sort={en}, % sort by this language tag (en = English)
  type=abbreviations, % put the entries in this glossary
  save-locations=false % no number list required
]

\GlsXtrLoadResources[
  src={symbols}, % data in symbols.bib
  sort={use}, % sort by order of use
  type=symbols, % put the entries in this glossary
  save-locations=false % no number list required
]


\begin{document}
\printunsrtglossary[type=symbols,style=long,title={List of Symbols}]
\printunsrtglossary[type=abbreviations]

Reference symbols: $\gls{F}$, $\gls{t}$, $\gls{x}$, $\gls{v}$, $\gls{a}$.

\gls{ny1} \gls{la1} and \gls{un1} are abbreviations that should
appear alphabetically in the list of abbreviations.

\end{document}

The document build is:

pdflatex test
bib2gls test
pdflatex test

By default bib2gls doesn't form letter groups, so there's no need for the nogroupskip option now. If you decide that you do actually want letter groups you need to add the --group or -g switch:

bib2gls -g test

The list of symbols is as before:

and the list of abbreviations is again in alphabetical order:

This provides a more flexible way of applying different ordering to different glossaries.

If your TeX distribution is too old to support either the hybrid method or the bib2gls method, you can use the \makenoidxglossaries method with just the base glossaries package as in the other answer, but with glossaries-extra you can still use \glsxtrnewsymbol if you have the symbols package option as that command has been available since the first release of glossaries-extra:

\documentclass[a4paper,twoside]{book}
\usepackage[abbreviations,symbols,nogroupskip,nonumberlist]{glossaries-extra}

\makenoidxglossaries

\glsxtrnewsymbol[description={position}]{x}{\ensuremath{x}}
\glsxtrnewsymbol[description={velocity}]{v}{\ensuremath{v}}
\glsxtrnewsymbol[description={acceleration}]{a}{\ensuremath{a}}
\glsxtrnewsymbol[description={time}]{t}{\ensuremath{t}}
\glsxtrnewsymbol[description={force}]{F}{\ensuremath{F}}

\newabbreviation{ny1}{NY}{New York}
\newabbreviation{la1}{LA}{Los Angeles}
\newabbreviation{un1}{UN}{United Nations}

\begin{document}
\printnoidxglossary[type=symbols,sort=use,style=long,title={List of Symbols}]
\printnoidxglossary[type=abbreviations]

Reference symbols: $\gls{F}$, $\gls{t}$, $\gls{x}$, $\gls{v}$, $\gls{a}$.

\gls{ny1} \gls{la1} and \gls{un1} are abbreviations that should
appear alphabetically in the list of abbreviations.

\end{document}

The advantage is that the code is a bit more compact.

EDIT

If you have the need to load the glossaries package with the option acronym

\usepackage[acronym]{glossaries}

then you can use this workaround to load your database with acronyms: substitute the line

\loadglsentries[nomenc]{INP-00-glossary}

with

\let\oldacronymtype\acronymtype
\def\acronymtype{nomenc}
\loadglsentries[nomenc]{INP-00-glossary}
\let\acronymtype\oldacronymtype

EDIT2

To solve your issue with \gls{md}, you should define the first key, which determines how the glossary entry is printed the first time it is used (it is automatic for acronyms, but not for common glossary entries).

This means that you have to rewrite your entry as:

\newglossaryentry{md}
{
  name={MD},
  description={molecular dynamics},
  first={\glsentrydesc{md} (\glsentrytext{md})}
}

[Tex/LaTex] Glossary per chapter (not by section)

The problem here is that you're mixing old and new commands. My original answer that you linked to is several years old and uses commands that are now deprecated, such as \glossarystyle and \glossaryentryfield. Your MWE has changed the deprecated \glossarystyle to \setglossarystyle but hasn't changed the deprecated \glossaryentryfield. By using the new \setglossarystyle, the backward-compatibility is removed and \glossaryentryfield isn't used.

To fix it, just replace \glossaryentryfield with the newer \glossentry:

  \renewcommand*{\glossentry}[2]{%
    \edef\doifinlocation{\noexpand\ifinlocation{\thechapter}{##2}}%
    \doifinlocation
    {%
      \item \glossentryname{##1} \glossentrydesc{##1}%
    }%
  }%

Complete MWE:

\documentclass{report}
\usepackage{datatool-base}
\usepackage[counter=chapter,xindy,section=section]{glossaries}
\GlsSetXdyMinRangeLength{0}
\makeglossaries
\newglossaryentry{E}{name={\ensuremath{E}},description={energy}}
\newglossaryentry{m}{name={\ensuremath{m}},description={mass}}
\newglossaryentry{c}{name={\ensuremath{c}},description={speed of light}}
\newglossaryentry{v}{name={\ensuremath{v}},description=velocity}
\newglossarystyle{mystyle}%
{%
  \setglossarystyle{list}%
  \renewcommand*{\glossaryentrynumbers}[1]{\striprelax##1\endstriprelax}%
  \renewcommand*{\glsXchapterXglsnumberformat}[2]{##2}%
  \renewcommand*{\delimR}{,}%
  \renewcommand*{\glossentry}[2]{%
    \edef\doifinlocation{\noexpand\ifinlocation{\thechapter}{##2}}%
    \doifinlocation
    {%
      \item \glossentryname{##1} \glossentrydesc{##1}%
    }%
  }%
}
\newcommand{\ifinlocation}[3]{%
 \DTLifinlist{#1}{#2}{#3}{}%
}
\def\striprelax\relax#1\endstriprelax{#1}
\setglossarystyle{mystyle}

\begin{document}
\chapter{Sample Chapter}
\printglossary
\begin{equation}
\gls{E} = \gls{m}\cdot \gls{c}^2
\end{equation}
\glsresetall 
\chapter{Another Chapter}
\printglossary
\begin{equation}
\gls{E} = \frac{\gls{m}\gls{v}^2}{2}
\end{equation}
\end{document}

First chapter:

Second chapter:

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Two separate acronym list using package glossaries

EDIT

EDIT2

[Tex/LaTex] Glossary per chapter (not by section)

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