[docbook-apps] Two column index not formatted properly in PDF output (FOP)

[Peter Bittner <bittner at teamworks dot eu dot com>]

Hi!

I have a DocBook/XML document with a couple of <indexterm>s which make up an
<index> that shows up at the end of the PDF document created by FOP
(0.20.5).

(The people from the FOP mailing list have told me, my question looks more
like a DocBook problem, that's why I'm here.)

The index which has a 2-column layout by default is not layed out propperly,
however. I have sketched below how it approximately looks like .

There are 2 problems:

?1.?The?second?column?starts?too?much?up,?on?the?very?upper?border?of?the
????page.?This?conflicts?with?the?title?of?the?page?(which?is?a?rather?long
????word?in?German:?"Stichwortverzeichnis")?and?overwrites?the?last
????characters?of?that?word. (The word "Stichwortverzeichnis", German for
    "Index" is verbally overwriten!)

?2.?Multiple?occurrences?of?one?and?the?same?term?result?in?a?list?of?one
????and?the?same?page?number?(e.g.?"8,15,15,15,15").

Regarding 1) I'd prefer the second column to start somewhat more below,
ideally horizontally aligned with the first column's first index letter
('A'). - Can I control that behavior somehow? (DocBook/XSL maybe??)

Regarding 2) I think the usual way in creating an index is to list every
page number only once, regardless to how many occurrences there are on one
and the same page of a specific index item. - Can I influence this behavior
somehow, too? (DocBook/XSL maybe??)

Here is my sketch of the index page produced by FOP:

---------------------------------------------------------
Index???????????????????????????U
????????????????????????????????Underline?8,15,15,15,17,
A?????????????????????????????????17,21
Articles 9,12,12,12,12,37???????Upper?case?11,11,53
Attribute 7,16,21,21,21,21,
??21,42,43??????????????????????V
????????????????????????????????Verbatim?10
B???????????????????????????????Verbose?36
....
????????????????????????????????X
C???????????????????????????????....
....
????????????????????????????????Z
D???????????????????????????????....
....

---------------------------------------------------------

Cheers,
Peter