I'm trying to create an index of notation for my paper.
I'd like to sort the index items chronologically by order of appearance.
In other words, if I have the symbol $Z$
occurring on the second page,
the symbol $C$
on the 8th
page and the symbol $P$
on the last page
I would like the index to appear as
Z, 2
C, 8
P, 97
Do you know how to do it automatically?
Best Answer
here's an approach that uses labels for the symbols and
\pageref
to keep them in input order. the\pageref
s need to be expanded before writing to the.idx
file; ordinarily index material is written out verbatim. this even permits multiple page references to the same symbol; in such a case, only the first appearance should get a label.the routine needs some more work, since at the moment it trims off leading zeros from
\pageref
numbers, so if there are any entries on pages 1-9 they will be out of order in an index for a book of up to 99 pages, etc. (it would probably be best to normalize on 3-digit page numbers.) i'll work on that when time permits, but if someone else gets there first, go for it!i'm also not sure what would happen with a symbol first introduced in a preface, or on some other page numbered with roman numerals. another open problem.