karl@free... (Karl Berry) wrote:

> [...]
>     but also in TeX which (for me at least) skews any cost-benefit ratio :-).

> :).  No index sorting has ever been implemented in texinfo.tex.  It's
> done with a separate C program, texindex, which remains essentially in
> its original state as of 1987 or so, sorting ASCII.  Life goes on ...

Well, my user interface to texinfo is usually autotools, and
as that has been working forever, I had never bothered to
investigate the workflow :-).  I had only skimmed the code,
but to me texinfo.fn looked like it is generated by code in
texinfo.tex and the right place to start:

| \entry{command}{83}{\code {command}}

If the third argument is the displayed text and the first
item is the sort key, "all" that needs to done would be to
output:

| \entry{command}{83}{\code {@command}}

for the input "@findex @@command" or a hypothetical
"@findexwithsortkey @@command command".  (I'd prefer the
latter as it leaves more control to the user and doesn't
subject him to the mercy of collations.)

Tim