MakeIndex, Nomenclature, Glossaries and Acronyms ⇒ Index help with species names: italics and subentries

[cara]

I'm having a problem with scientific species names and my index.
The species names should be in italics and with subentries if there is more than one species (e.g. Rana dunni, Rana onca) from the same genus (e.g. Rana).
Meaning I would like to have the entry Rana with the subentries dunni and onca
I don't want all the species names at the beginning of the index (the command

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\textit{Rana dunni}\index{\textit{Rana!dunni}}

does that), but I'd rather have the species names in the index with all the other index entries (e.g. dolor, vivamus).
So I changed the command to

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\textit{Rana dunni}\index{Rana@\textit{Rana!dunni}}

Additionally this changed command allows me to format the index entry number with an additional |textbf or |textit.

The problem is that it works fine with one entry (Ranna dunni), but when I add the second entry (Ranna onca) it still works but I get the error:

! Extra }, or forgotten \endgroup

And I have quite a lot of species names to deal with so I'd rather solve this than have tons of error messages.

Here is my MWE:

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\documentclass[a4paper]{article}

\usepackage[english]{babel}

\usepackage{makeidx}
 \makeindex 


\begin{document}
 Lorem ipsum dolor\index{dolor} sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.
 Vivamus\index{vivamus} elementum semper nisi.
 
\textit{Rana dunni}\index{Rana@\textit{Rana!dunni}} 

\textit{Rana onca}\index{Rana@\textit{Rana!onca}}

\printindex

\end{document}

I'm using MikTeX, TeXnicCenter 1.0 Stable Release Candidate 1 and I'm compiling to dvi.

Help would be really appreciated.
Thx & Cheers
edited to put the two commands in code environment

[localghost]

At first thanks for this very good minimal example and the problem description. You cannot put the main entry and sub-entry together with the »!« separator as argument for the text formatting command. You have to format them separately. See below for the relevant parts of your example.

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\textit{Rana dunni}\index{Rana@\textit{Rana}!\textit{dunni}}
\textit{Rana onca}\index{Rana@\textit{Rana}!\textit{onca}}

But it seems a little bit uncomfortable to always type this when marking an index entry. So it's better to define a new command which needs a mandatory argument for the main entry and accepts an optional one for the possible sub-entry.

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\newcommand*{\itindex}[2][]{\textit{#2 #1}\index{#2@\textit{#2}\ifx#1\empty\else!\textit{#1}\fi}}

The line above goes into the preamble. Now you only have to use this new command in your document as follows.

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\itindex{Rana}

\itindex[dunni]{Rana}

\itindex[onca]{Rana}

The new command will show the arguments in the text and simultaneously put them into the index (in opposite to the original \index command). You can define similar commands for the other font styles.


Best regards and welcome to the board
Thorsten

[cara]

Thanks very much for the prompt and perfect solution to my problem!

It now works beautifully! You made my day.


I just wanted to ask if you could explain the command a bit, so that I can hopefully one day make my own new commands,

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\newcommand*{\itindex}[2][]{\textit{#2 #1}\index{#2@\textit{#2}\ifx#1\empty\else!\textit{#1}\fi}}

or if you could point me in the right direction for more documentation on this sorta thing?


Thx a bunch & Cheers

[cara]

I have a problem with the new command

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\newcommand*{\itindex}[2][]{\textit{#2 #1}\index{#2@\textit{#2}\ifx#1\empty\else!\textit{#1}\

\itindex{Rana}

\itindex[dunni]{Rana}

\itindex[onca]{Rana}

because after the first mention I abbreviate my species names.
So Ranna dunni would be R. dunni after the first mention, but I need the full name in the index.

The command you made replaces the whole species name and does not work like the normal \index command.

The normal \index command in the text would look like this:

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\textit{R. dunni}\index{Rana dunni}

but the new \itindex command looks like this

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\itindex[dunni]{Ranna}

Is there any way to make the \itindex command behave like the \index command so that I can just add the \itindex command behind my species names no matter if they are abbreviated or not?

MWE

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\documentclass[a4paper]{article}
\usepackage[english]{babel}

\usepackage{makeidx}
\makeindex
\newcommand*{\itindex}[2][]{\textit{#2 #1}\index{#2@\textit{#2}\ifx#1\empty\else!\textit{#1}\fi}}

\begin{document}
Lorem ipsum dolor\index{dolor} sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.
Vivamus\index{vivamus} elementum semper nisi.
\itindex{Rana}
\itindex[onca]{Rana}

\itindex[dunni]{Rana}
\textit{R.~dunni}\itindex[dunni]{Rana}

\printindex

\end{document}

Thx

[localghost]

I have a problem with the new command [...] because after the first mention I abbreviate my species names. []

That complicates things a little bit (and should have been mentioned right at the beginning).

[...] The command you made replaces the whole species name and does not work like the normal \index command. [...]

I'm well aware. And I explained that already.

[...] Is there any way to make the \itindex command behave like the \index command so that I can just add the \itindex command behind my species names no matter if they are abbreviated or not?[...]

Another idea is to extend the command so that it takes one more optional argument. I tinkered some time with different mechanisms but none of them worked satisfactory. So I used the xifthen and xargs package.

Very astonishing and also notable is the fact that you always have to give the first optional argument to the command (even if it is empty). Otherwise it doesn't work. Utilization of the new command \itidx is shown below.

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\documentclass[11pt,a4paper,english]{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{babel}
\usepackage{makeidx}
\usepackage{xifthen,xargs}

\makeindex

\newcommandx*{\itidx}[3][1=,2=]{%
  \textit{\ifthenelse{\isempty{#1}}{#3 #2}{#1. #2}}\index{#3@\textit{#3}\ifx#2\empty\else!\textit{#2}\fi}
}

%\newcommand*{\itindex}[2][]{\textit{#2 #1}\index{#2@\textit{#2}\ifx#1\empty\else!\textit{#1}\fi}}


\begin{document}
  Lorem ipsum dolor\index{dolor} sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Vivamus\index{vivamus} elementum semper nisi.

  The \itidx{Rana}

  The \itidx[][dunni]{Rana}

  The \itidx[][onca]{Rana}

  The \itidx[R][dunni]{Rana}

  \printindex
\end{document}

It might also be worth to think about a solution with the xkeyval package.

Note: If somebody has a similar solution perhaps without or with less additional packages, I would be very interested.

[cara]

Thx a lot. This new command works fine in the index, but it is a bit problematic in the text, because it inserts empty space after the species names. This is fine except when the species name is followed by a comma or period.

I already tried to insert the command

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$\!$

(sometimes multiple times )after the \itidx command finished in the text

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\itidx[][dunni]{Rana}$\!$

to get rid of the space between the species names and commas or periods.

And it works sometimes, but other times I have the species name at the end of the line and the comma or period can be found at the beginning of the next line.
Furthermore the command

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$\!$

is incredibly clumsy and even if it works, it doesn't look like it's supposed to be (the comma/period is too close etc.).

So i would be really grateful if you'd know a way around this.

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\documentclass[11pt,a4paper,english]{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{babel}
\usepackage{makeidx}
\usepackage{xifthen,xargs}

\makeindex

\newcommandx*{\itidx}[3][1=,2=]{%
  \textit{\ifthenelse{\isempty{#1}}{#3 #2}{#1. #2}}\index{#3@\textit{#3}\ifx#2\empty\else!\textit{#2}\fi}
}

%\newcommand*{\itindex}[2][]{\textit{#2 #1}\index{#2@\textit{#2}\ifx#1\empty\else!\textit{#1}\fi}}


\begin{document}
  Lorem ipsum dolor\index{dolor} sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Vivamus\index{vivamus} elementum semper nisi.

 Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit elit. The \itidx{Rana}, Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.

  The \itidx[][dunni]{Rana}, Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.

  The \itidx[][onca]{Rana}.
  Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.

  The \itidx[R][dunni]{Rana}.

  \printindex
\end{document}

Thx a lot for your patience!!!

[localghost]

I tried several approaches, but without success. At the moment I can't continue working on that because other tasks require my attention. Perhaps somebody else can help. For the moment it seems that have to use the traditional method.

[nlct]

Try the following definition of \itidx:

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\newcommandx*{\itidx}[3][1=,2=]{%
  \index{#3@\textit{#3}\ifx#2\empty\else!\textit{#2}\fi}%
  \textit{\ifthenelse{\isempty{#1}}{#3%
    \ifthenelse{\isempty{#2}}{}{ #2}}{#1.%
    \ifthenelse{\isempty{#2}}{}{\ #2}}}%
}

Regards
Nicola Talbot