[Tex/LaTex] How to include notation using nomencl in document

nomenclature

I've been trying to use the nomencl package to start a table of notation. I'm using the example code included in the documentation:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{nomencl}
\makenomenclature
\begin{document}
\section*{Main equations}
\begin{equation}
a=\frac{N}{A}
\end{equation}%
\nomenclature{$a$}{The number of angels per unit area}%
\nomenclature{$N$}{The number of angels per needle point}%
\nomenclature{$A$}{The area of the needle point}%
The equation $\sigma = m a$%
\nomenclature{$\sigma$}{The total mass of angels per unit area}%
\nomenclature{$m$}{The mass of one angel}
follows easily.
\printnomenclature
\end{document}

I see this produces the .nlo file as it should, but I can't run it. I gather according to the manual I'm supposed to run a command, but how do I go about doing this – I'm running Windows 7 with TeX Live 2011.

Best Answer

The nomencl documentation states that you have to run

makeindex <filename>.nlo -s nomencl.ist -o <filename>.nls

(from the command line, or as part of your editor workflow) which produces a .nls file, which is used by \printnomenclature. In fact, nomencl defines

\def\@outputfileextension{.nlo}%
\def\@inputfileextension{.nls}%

to be the respective output and input file extensions. The former is created via \makenomenclature, while the latter is used by \printnomenclature.

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Using package nomencl

The nomencl package documentation explicitly states the compile sequence in order to use the package:

latex <filename>.tex
makeindex <filename>.nlo -s nomencl.ist -o <filename>.nls
latex <filename>.tex

If you're using pdflatex, the same sequence holds. After following this sequence, your nomenclature chapter is printed, as expected:

Nomenclature

[Tex/LaTex] nomencl package and vertical bar |

The nomencl package uses the standard MakeIndex process and | is a special character for the \index command. So there's no way unless you produce a variant of nomencl.ist that disables that special character:

%% ---- for input file ----
keyword    "\\nomenclatureentry"
%% Germans might want to change this and delete the two %%
%% quote '"'
%% ---- for output file ----
preamble   "\\begin{thenomenclature} \n"%
postamble  "\n\n\\end{thenomenclature}\n" group_skip "\n"
delim_0    ""
delim_1    ""
delim_2    ""
%% The next lines will produce some warnings when
%% running Makeindex as they try to cover two different
%% versions of the program:
lethead_prefix "\n \\nomgroup{"
lethead_suffix "}\n"
lethead_flag   1
heading_prefix "\n \\nomgroup{"
heading_suffix "}\n"
headings_flag  1
encap '?'

The last line is the additional one, I've put a question mark that probably you won't use in a nomenclature entry. Save the file as mynomencl.ist and use

makeindex ⟨filename ⟩.nlo -s mynomencl.ist -o ⟨filename ⟩.nls

to produce the .nls file.

It's probably better to remember \vert instead of |. By the way, the amsmath package provides \lvert and \rvert that should be preferred to simple bars: \lvert A\rvert will have correct spacing also in critical situations when |A| might not.

For the rare usage of |, you can also get around the issue with

\nomenclature{$s(A)$}{equivalent to $"|A"|$}

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Using package nomencl

[Tex/LaTex] nomencl package and vertical bar |

Related Question