how do I make a good looking index?

[rdg_nz]

I am trying to understand makeindex and am trying to get a nice looking index, with reverse hyperlinks and letter headings (like you can see in a lot of latex documentation, for example the scrindex package documentation). Everything works ok but at the moment I can get only a very basic index in two columns which does not wrap long lines correctly. Do I need to specify some particular .ist file somehow?

I am using the scrbook class and scrindex package followed by \makeindex command. I am using rubber (excellent tool, btw) to compile the document. Index style can be specified by a rubber directive but nothing I try seems to change anything. Any help would be much appreciated.

[phi]

There are many different ways to customize indexes.

• You get hyperlinks by loading the hyperref package.
• The index package provides some enhancements.
• MakeIndex style files (.ist) are written in a format that is quite trivial (see the makeindex manual for a description). The ltxdoc class that is used for many package manuals uses the style file gind.ist, which can serve as an example for the letter group headings.
• Xindy is a replacement for MakeIndex that is much more comprehensive (and thus harder to program).

[rdg_nz]

Thanks a lot for the helpful and quick reply.

Switching to gind style is a start, I now get letter headings. However there is no gap at all in between the index text and the page numbers, they don't group properley or line wrap and I don't get hyperlinks (despite using the hyperref package).

It would be nice to see a really good guide to making and customising indexes in latex sometime.

[phi]

Could you post an example? All my indexes have line breaks and hyperlinks by default, so there must be a problem somewhere.