UK TeX FAQ -- question 163

### Multiple indexes

LaTeX's standard indexing capabilities (those provided by the makeidx package) only provide for one index in your document; even quite modest documents can be improved by indexes for separate topics.

The multind package provides simple and straightforward multiple indexing. You tag each `\makeindex`, `\index` and `\printindex` command with a file name, and indexing commands are written to (or read from) the name with the appropriate (`.idx` or `.ind`) extension appended. The `\printindex` command is modified from the LaTeX standard so that it doesn't create its own chapter or section heading; you therefore decide what names (or sectioning level, even) to use for the indexes, and `\indexname` is completely ignored.

The index package provides a comprehensive set of indexing facilities, including a `\newindex` command that allows the definition of new styles of index. `\newindex` takes a 'tag' (for use in indexing commands), replacements for the `.idx` and `.ind` file extensions, and a title for the index when it's finally printed; it can also change the item that's being indexed against (for example, one might have an index of artists referenced by the figure number where their work is shown).

The splitidx package (which comes with a small executable splitindex available for a variety of platforms) is another alternative. It supports the sorts of things that the index package does, but is not limited by the number of output streams (La)TeX can have open at any one time.

`index.sty`
  Distributed as part of macros/latex/contrib/supported/camel.tar.gz
`multind.sty`
  macros/latex209/contrib/misc/multind.sty
`splitidx.sty \latexhtml{{\normalfont and}}{and} splitindex`
  macros/latex/contrib/supported/splitindex.tar.gz