[libreoffice-design] About indexes

This is not really a "proposal" (I do not know how this should be
implemented) but a starting point for a discussion.

Indexes and Table of Contents have several limitations on Writer. The
most obvious is the inability to honour certain formatting on the
headings (for example, if you insert a subindex on the heading, it
will show as normal text on the TOC):

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=30732

For most situations there is a "work around" by using Linux Libertine
G or Linux Biolinum G with "TeX mode" enabled, but this do not help if
you need a Greek character as super index, or if you need italics for
a particular, technical word (quite common in biology or chemistry).

Another related issue: character in index entry dialog

http://openoffice.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=106199

There are also problems with formatting: tabstops on TOC are no fully
functional (do not support right and middle alignment)

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=32360

But there are other situations on which indexes are *very* flawed,
specially for academic use.

This issue: Allowing more than one Alphabetical Index

http://openoffice.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=6401

was filled for OOo more than nine years ago and make Writer almost
unusable on several scientific applications: it is quite common to
have an index for Authors and another for Keywords, for example, and
that cannot be accomplished on Writer because only one "user index" is
allowed.

Yes, you can use one index and several keys to simulate more than one
index... but you can do that only if those indexes goes one after the
other on the same page, which it is not really the most common
layout...

Another issue: Alphabetical Indexes cross-reference

http://openoffice.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=104691

Copy/pasting the example on the issue, on Writer it is not possible to
get the following:

Beijing......see China
Belgium...........p 8-10
China.............p 27-29
Greenland.........p 12-14
Madrid.......see Spain
Spain.............p 18-31

i.e., the famous "see" and "see also" entries on large indexes. This
do not only hinder Writer capabilities, but also rise compatibility
issues because Word offers this ability.

Another one: Alphabetical index: controlling sorting

http://openoffice.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=114115

following one of the examples on the issue, it is not possible to list the entry

"Nouvelle Vague" movement

under N instead of "...

... and so on. Note that the listed issues link to another related
issues as well...

So I think a complete redesign of the indexes inside Writer is badly
needed. Maybe if we agree on the needed features and how those
features should be implemented we can build together a nice feature
request :)

Cheers
Ricardo

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