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From: mark@motown.altair.fr (Mark James)
Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
Subject: Indexing multi-part page numbers
Message-ID: <2155@seti.inria.fr>
Date: 2 May 91 16:42:27 GMT
Article-I.D.: seti.2155
Sender: news@seti.inria.fr
Organization: Altair/INRIA, France
Lines: 38


I'm responsible for a 300-page user manual that's getting more and
more stable, as our product does likewise.  So instead of reprinting
the whole thing with each new version, I'd like to print only those
chapters that have changed.  In order not to screw up the pagination
and the index of the whole thing, I'd like to switch from LaTeX's
standard sequential page numbers to the format n-m, where n is the
chapter number and m is the page number within the chapter.  I did:

\renewcommand{\thepage}{\thechapter-\arabic{page}}

and reset the page number with each chapter.  Everything works except
the index (I use Scott Simpson's "index" program).  The \index
commands generate the appropriate page numbers in the .idx file, but
the "index" program chokes on that format when creating its .ind file.

So my questions are:

1.  Is there another indexing program (makeindex, indexor, etc.) that
    handles arbitrary page number formats?  Does anyone have any
    experience from which I might profit?

2.  This suggests that other aspects of TeX/LaTeX might also depend
    upon sequential, numeric page numbers.  For example, how are page
    numbers stored in .dvi files, so that programs such as dvips know
    where to find page 137 when I give the "-p 137" option?  What
    horrors await me as I proceed with this effort?

In my two years of reading comp.text.tex, I recall no one expressing
the slightest interest in this subject, so e-mail responses are
probably most appropriate.  If I'm wrong on that, let me know and I'll
post a summary.  Thanks for any advice.

--
=== T. Mark James           ==== opinions, errors etc are my own ===
=== mark@bdblues.altair.fr  ==== "I'm stupid enough to try anything
=== +33 (1) 39 63 53 93     ====  once."  -- The `Bag Man'
================================      Univ. of Washington, 1968