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Glossaries and Acronyms with LaTeX using glosstex

n.b. This page, written in 2004, uses glosstex which has since been superceded by the glossaries package

Simple Use

Put the following into a file called doc.tex

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{glosstex}
\begin{document}
% print acronym list
  \printglosstex(acr)
  \section{Introduction}
  This document is typeset using \gls{LaTeX}.
% use \glosstex to add an entry to the glossary - nothing appears in the text
  The database file\glosstex{gdf-file} for use with
% use \gls to add an entry to the glossary and the text
  \gls{GlossTeX} is a flat
% use \ac to add an entry to the acronym list and the text
  \ac{ASCII} file.
% print glossary
  \printglosstex(glo)
\end{document}

and put this into a file called definitions.gdf. Make sure that the @entry strings are at the start of lines.

@entry{LaTeX, \LaTeX{}} \LaTeX{} is a \TeX{}-format.

@entry{GlossTeX} is an add-on.

@entry{ASCII, ASCII, American Standard Code for Information
Interchange} ASCII is a character encoding.

@entry{gdf-file} The file containing glossary definitions

Then do

   latex doc
   glosstex doc definitions.gdf
   makeindex doc.gxs -o doc.glx -s glosstex.ist
   latex doc

The resulting file should have a table of acronyms, some text, and then a glossary.

Note that the command lines required might be slightly different at your site - the example above works on CUED Unix Teaching System.

Behind the scenes

Lots can go wrong, so it worth knowing something about the underlying mechanism.

"latex doc" - this creates doc.aux (which contains information on which glossary/acronym entries are needed by the document) and doc.log (a log file).
"glosstex doc definitions.gdf" - this reads in doc.aux and the definitions. It creates doc.gxs (for makeindex to use) and doc.gxg (a log file).
"makeindex doc.gxs -o doc.glx -s glosstex.ist" - this orders the entries and creates doc.glx
"latex doc" - this reads in doc.aux (as usual with latex) and doc.glx. If you get
```
    (doc.glx)
    ! LaTeX Error: Something's wrong--perhaps a missing \item.
```
it's likely that doc.glx is empty because something has gone wrong earlier.

These intermediate log files contain a lot of extraneous information, but may also contain important hints that help when things go wrong.

Features

Calling the package using

   \usepackage[refpage]{glosstex}

adds page numbers to the Glossary. For details on further customisation options see the "Using Glosstex" document.

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