Create an overview of scattered items / requirement list

Question

I'm writing a document where I have to define multiple requirements. These requirements are scattered all over the document, since they belong in different sections and are explained seperately.

It would be good to have a central overview of all these requirements in one place, e.g. a table. Unfortunately I can't figure out, how to do this, so I don't have to write the text of the requirement manually into the table (in case I am changing the words in one of them later, it should also automatically change in the overview, similar to a glossary or a ToC).

I already made an own counter, so I don't have to number everything manually, since it's possible that I'm adding a requirement later on. However, I also tried to solve this problem before with an additional glossary, but these packages are quite... difficult to handle for me, so I failed with this approach.

A perfect solution would be, if I just have to write \newreq{Requirement description} and it would generate an automatically numbered output like R01 Requirement description - and in addition I can use a command like \printreqoverview which is printing the table.

Details like formatting or appearance I can modify later, but I am currently stuck with this referencing - and it would really help, since I have to write every description two times and check for spelling mistakes every time - a reference would help.

I'm sorry, I can't describe the problem very well I guess...

I added a minimum working example, which does not contain any referencing, just automatic numbering:

\documentclass[10pt]{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\usepackage{fmtcount}

\newcounter{rcount}
\setcounter{rcount}{0}
\newcommand{\newreq}{
    \stepcounter{rcount}
    \textbf{R\padzeroes[2]{\decimal{rcount}}}
}

\begin{document}

\section{First Chapter}

\lipsum[4]

\begin{enumerate}
    \item[\newreq] This is the first requirement.
    \item[\newreq] This is the second requirement.
\end{enumerate}

\lipsum[4]

\begin{enumerate}
    \item[\newreq] This is the third requirement.
\end{enumerate}

\lipsum[4]

\section{Overview Table}

\begin{tabular}{|l|l|}
    \hline
    \# & Requirement \\ \hline
    \hline
    R01 & Text of R01 \\ \hline
    R02 & Text of R02 \\ \hline
    R03 & Text of R03 \\ \hline
\end{tabular}

\end{document}

Answer 1

This is a job for the tocloft package. It allows customizing the printing of the table of contents, list of figures, and list of tables; and also defining new “list of...”s.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\usepackage{fmtcount}
\usepackage{tocloft}
\newlistof{requirement}{lor}{List of Requirements}

\renewcommand\therequirement{R\padzeroes[3]{\decimal{requirement}}}
\newcommand{\newreq}[1]{%
  \refstepcounter{requirement}%
  \par\noindent\textbf{\therequirement. }#1%
  \addcontentsline{lor}{requirement}{\protect\numberline{\therequirement} #1}%
}


\begin{document}

\section{First Chapter}

\lipsum

\newreq{This is the first requirement.}
\newreq{This is the second requirement.}


\lipsum

\newreq{This is the third requirement.}

\lipsum

\listofrequirement

\end{document}

The line \newlistof{requirement}{lor}{List of Requirements} creates a new “list of”, based on a counter requirement (I renamed your rcount; LaTeX counters are in a different namespace than other macros so it's not necessary to have count in the name). The list will be generated in a file whose base name is the same as the current job name, and whose extension is .lor. The last argument is the title of the list to be displayed. This command creates the macro \listofrequirement, which you can invoke to print the list.

But writing the list is done on a step-by-step basis, each time a requirement is created. The text of the requirement is needed as an argument to \newreq. The new \newreq command first prints the requirement label, then the requirement text. (You can customize how you want the requirements formatted.) The \addcontentsline command adds a line to the .lor file. After expansion, that line will look like:

\contentsline {requirement}{\numberline {R\padzeroes [3]{\@decimal {1}}} This is the first requirement.}{2}

You can change the list of requirements to be a tabular, but you will have to make sure the \begin{tabular} is written to the .lor file at the beginning of the document and \end{tabular} at the end. \AtBeginDocument and \AtEndDocument can be used here. But perhaps this is good enough.