Re: DOCBOOK: indexterms

[Bob Stayton <bobs at sco dot COM>]

> From: Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com>
> 
> / Jorge Godoy <godoy@conectiva.com> was heard to say:
> | Why not
> | 
> | <indexterm>
> |    <primary>L</primary>
> |       <secondary>Language</secondary>
> |          <tertiary>French</tertiary>
> |          <tertiary>German</tertiary>
> |       </secondary>
> |    </primary>
> | </indexterm>
> 
> Because you can only have one tertiary.
> 
>  <indexterm>
>     <primary>L</primary>
>        <secondary>Language</secondary>
>           <tertiary>French</tertiary>
>        </secondary>
>     </primary>
>  </indexterm>
>  <indexterm>
>     <primary>L</primary>
>        <secondary>Language</secondary>
>           <tertiary>German</tertiary>
>        </secondary>
>     </primary>
>  </indexterm>
> 
> Would work, if you want the language to be tertiary.

First of all, this won't work because you have two
closing tags for each <primary> and <secondary>
opening tag.  But you knew that.  ;^)

And this answer is going to mislead latecomers to this discussion
into thinking that you code <indexterm>s with the index
letter as the primary element, which is not correct.
The index generating machinery will normally generate
the letter headings like "L".  The original request was for
an index that looks like this:

L
  Language
    French
    German
    Brazilian
    Swahili

He was just trying to force multiple secondary elements
into a single indexterm element, which isn't supported by
the DTD, although it could be a feature request.

So to answer the original question, you must have a
separate <indexterm> element for each entry, repeating
the <primary>Language</primary> element:

<indexterm>
   <primary>Language</primary>
      <secondary>French</secondary>
</indexterm>
<indexterm>
   <primary>Language</primary>
      <secondary>German</secondary>
</indexterm>
...

bobs
Bob Stayton                                 400 Encinal Street
Publications Architect                      Santa Cruz, CA  95060
Technical Publications                      voice: (831) 427-7796
The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc.              fax:   (831) 429-1887
                                            email: bobs@sco.com