How do I prepare an index of symbols with memoir?

Question

I want to prepare an index of symbols for a book I'm writing (using the memoir class). There is an obvious problem of how you order the symbols. Since many of them are non-alphabetic, I think that the order of appearance in the book is the best idea. I skimmed through the man page for makeindex, but didn't find any option for that (and I don't want to do things like \index{01@symbol}, \index{02@symbol} etc., for obvious reasons).

Bonus points for a solution where non-alphabetic symbols appear first (as a group), sorted in the order of appearance, and alphabetic ones after them, sorted lexicographically, like in

Symbols
=
<
(,)

A
angle
apple
arrgh

B
Banach space
banana

Do something like \index{aaaaaaa\arabic{symbolcounter} @\somesymbol}\stepcounter{symbolcounter}? — Symbol 1, Sep 18 '14 at 14:49
Thanks! I thought about it, too, but some time after posting the question. It might work, and if there's no package doing this, I'll probably end up writing one. ;) — mbork, Sep 18 '14 at 15:53
Ha, I found out that my question is mostly duplicate of http://tex.stackexchange.com/q/41140/5626 . — mbork, Sep 18 '14 at 15:55
Under that post egreg explained "hAB" without an implement. And Marc van Dongen gave an answer producing duplicated symbol-items. — Symbol 1, Sep 18 '14 at 16:05
What do you mean by "duplicated"? (I didn't test the solutions there.) — mbork, Sep 18 '14 at 16:15
if you say \index{cos} twice it produces two "cos"'s in your index. And if you start the counter from 1, you cannot predict which goes first: 1, 13, or 123 — Symbol 1, Sep 18 '14 at 16:16

Symbol 1 · Answer 1 · 2014-09-18T16:08:29.070

Something like this?

Explaination

\newsymbol{cos} gives this symbol ( $\cos$ ) an unique id (= current value of symbolcounter). This number is stored in the macro symbolidofcos.
\symbolindex{cos} check whether this symbol appeared before. If not, it does \newsymbol{cos}. It then, no matter the symbol being new or old, writes informations into the index.
Symbols will be sorted according to their ids. Since ids are given in sequences, symbols will be shown in the order of their first appearances.

Here is the code

\documentclass{memoir}
\usepackage{makeidx}
    \makeindex
    \newcounter{symbolcounter}\setcounter{symbolcounter}{1000}
    \newcommand*\newsymbol[1]{
        \stepcounter{symbolcounter}
        \expandafter\edef\csname symbolidof#1\endcsname{\arabic{symbolcounter}}}
    \newcommand*\symbolindex[1]{
        \ifcsname symbolidof#1\endcsname\else\newsymbol{#1}\fi
        \index{~@(Symbols)!\csname symbolidof#1\endcsname @$\csname#1\endcsname$}}
\begin{document}
    \index{Lorem}
    $\sin\theta$\symbolindex{sin}
    \index{ipsum}
    $\cos\theta$\symbolindex{cos}
    \index{dolor}
    $\tan\theta$\symbolindex{tan}
    \index{sit}
\clearpage
    \index{amet}
    $\cos\phi$\symbolindex{cos}
    \index{consectetur}
    $\cosh\phi$\symbolindex{cosh}
    \index{adipiscing}
\printindex
\end{document}

How do I prepare an index of symbols with memoir?

1 Answers1