Text Formatting ⇒ bibliography and Index

[gwada74]

Hi,

my editor is asking me an harmonization of the presentation of my two column bibliography and my two column index. for my bibliography I use multicol package and the index automaticaly gives an output in two column, but the column separation are not the same. I would like to get an index in one column that I convert with multicol in two columns. Is this possible ?

[localghost]

With a small piece of code you can find out the value for the length \columnsep in both environments.

Code: Select all

\documentclass[11pt,a4paper]{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{multicol}
\usepackage{makeidx}

\makeindex

\begin{document}
  \begin{multicols}{2}
    \the\columnsep
  \end{multicols}

  \index{c@\the\columnsep}
  \printindex
\end{document}

Modify it so that it matches that of the theindex environment.

After writing this I had the idea to simply look at the sources of the used class file. At least for the standard classes this length is set to 35pt for the index and 10pt for the multi-column environments.


Thorsten

[gwada74]

Hello, this is not working, the class I am using is the class book. I think that the best way is to change the source of \printindex but I am not good in this area. If you have an idea...

[localghost]

Hello, this is not working, the class I am using is the class book. I think that the best way is to change the source of \printindex but I am not good in this area. […]

»Is not working« is one of the most trivial phrases. You have to be more precise. Error messages or similar stuff from the log file have turned out to be most helpful in such cases. And of course the above code works also with the »book« class (see attachment). And it also works either with MakeIndex or Xindy. Perhaps I haven't been clear enough. You can simply adjust the length \columnsep with one single line in the document preamble.

Code: Select all

\setlength{\columnsep}{35pt}

Changes to or redefinitions of commands or environments are not necessary. If the problem persists, please show with a minimal example where the above given line is not successful.