- The program supports all of the major features of MakeIndex.
- This is a fat binary. That is, it runs in native mode on a Power Macintosh. It works well on a 680x0 Macintosh too.
- It requires System 7 or greater.
- The program is high level event aware. You can drop your .idx file onto the application icon. If you have the "Go After Opening" option set, the program will immediately process the file.
- It handles large index files with ease. You just need enough memory on your machine. It uses temporary memory, so you don't need to increase the application size to process a large file. It should handle low memory situations gracefully.
- If you have the "Go After Opening" option set and you drop several .idx files on MakeIndex, it will process each file sequentially, producing an .ind file for each one. (If you don't have the "Go After Opening" option set, it will open each file, and then close it when it receives the next open request. This seems like a fairly useless mode of operation IMHO.)
- MakeIndex will automatically open a style file (.ist file) if one exists. If you are processing a file called foo.idx, then MakeIndex will automatically open a file called foo.ist if it exists in the same folder.
- MakeIndex knows about Apple's extended character set. It will sort correctly even if you use accented characters and ligatures in Apple's extended character set.
I have tried to maintain as many functions of the Unix version as possible. Here are a few minor limitations:
- This program will process one input file at a time. That is, it won't process an .idx file that is spread out over several files. You will have to concatenate the files first.
- When sorting, only the first 255 characters of the sort key are significant. This should be more than enough. If this is a problem, please let me know.
- The MakeIndex style file (the .ist file) must be in the same folder as the .idx file. There is no notion of a style path that points to a folder of style files.
- If you use the Page Number: Even, Odd, or Any option (see the LaTeX Companion page 355), MakeIndex expects to find a .log file (produced by LaTeX) in the same folder as the .idx file. Note that Textures doesn't automatically create this file. If you are using Textures you will have to save the contents of your log window and remember to call the file foo.log if your .idx file is called foo.idx.
Version 1.1 Changes
-Better recovery from low memory situations.
- Use the Select Style File menu item in the File menu to explicitly specify which style file you would like to use. If you don't specify a style file, MakeIndex will look for a file with the same name as the .idx file but with an .ist extension.
- MakeIndex will let you open .glo (glossary) files. The corresponding output file will have a .gls extension.
