firstindexletter

firstindexletter is a LaTeX package for visually emphasizing the first entry of each index letter group by enlarging its initial letter.

The package is intended primarily for indexes generated with xindy/texindy, where the generated .ind file contains \lettergroup{...} information. It works at LaTeX macro level: instead of modifying the generated .ind file, it hooks into the theindex environment and formats the first entry of each effective letter group.

The package provides configurable initial size, font family and color, and a simple three-level optical kerning mechanism for selected initial-letter pairs. It also supports Hungarian multi-character initials such as Cs, Gy, Ly, Ny, Sz, Ty and Zs, with configurable handling of Dz and Dzs.

Files

The distribution contains:

• firstindexletter.sty — the package file;
• firstindexletter-doc.tex — English documentation source;
• firstindexletter-doc.pdf — English documentation;
• firstindexletter-doc-hu.tex — Hungarian documentation source;
• firstindexletter-doc-hu.pdf — Hungarian documentation;
• README.md — this file;
• LICENSE — license information;
• CHANGELOG.md — release history.

Basic usage

\usepackage{firstindexletter}
\FirstIndexLetterEnable

A typical index declaration with imakeidx and texindy is:

\makeindex[
  name=places,
  title=Place names,
  columns=3,
  noautomatic,
  program=texindy,
  options=-L english -C utf8
]

For Hungarian sorting, use suitable Hungarian texindy settings, for example:

\makeindex[
  name=places,
  title=Place names,
  columns=3,
  noautomatic,
  program=texindy,
  options=-L hungarian -M hungarian-utf8
]

To enable separate effective handling of Dz and Dzs groups when the generated index contains suitable \lettergroup entries:

\FirstIndexLetterSeparateDz
\FirstIndexLetterSeparateDzs

Building the documentation

For the English manual:

pdflatex firstindexletter-doc.tex
texindy -L english -C utf8 places.idx
pdflatex firstindexletter-doc.tex
pdflatex firstindexletter-doc.tex

For the Hungarian manual, use the corresponding .tex file and Hungarian texindy settings used in that document.

Requirements

The package requires LaTeX2ε and loads:

• imakeidx with the xindy option;
• xcolor.

The documentation additionally uses standard packages such as hyperref, listings, multicol, geometry, url, ifpdf and graphicx.

License

This work may be distributed and/or modified under the conditions of the LaTeX Project Public License, either version 1.3c of this license or, at your option, any later version.

This work has the LPPL maintenance status maintained.

The Current Maintainer of this work is Zsolt Bihari.

Author

Zsolt Bihari <info@tengerikajak.net>