Linux Tips and Tricks

]> Linux Tips and Tricks Linux tips tricks vi syntax highlighting smartcase incsearch scrolloff wildmode multiple search vimrc Netscape windows resizing windows positioning roaming profiles CSS DocBook SGML transparent proxying squid html2png html2ps ps2png image capture ABAB ABAP syntax highlighting netscape bugs restore HTML sessions recover sessions remote control openURL LyX cross-reference index generation automatic index mass insertion 0.09 18.02..2004 CK Automatic Index generation with LyX 0.08 22.01..2004 CK Chapter on LyX, cross-references, Licence section, Appendix 0.07 25.12..2003 CK Discussion of the CSS for DocBook code, Credits 0.06 01.08..2003 CK HTML to PNG. ABAP/4 syntax highlighting 0.05 01.07..2003 CK More on roaming profiles. 0.04 04.06..2003 CK Added chapter on transparent proxying. Added Index. Alt text and captions for images 0.03 29.05.2003 CK Added chapters on Netscape and CSS for DocBook. 0.02 18.12.2002 CK first version ChrisKarakasThis is a collection of various tips and tricks around Linux. Since they don't fit anywhere else, they are presented here in a more or less loose form. We start on how to get an attractive vi by using syntax highlighting (even for ABAP/4Ž), multiple search and the smartcase, incsearch, scrolloff, wildmode options in the vimrc file. We continue on various configuration subjects regarding NetscapeŽ, like positioning and sizing of windows, capturing a whole HTML page in an image, or roaming profiles. Further on, I present a CSS file for HTML documents that were created automatically from DocBook SGML. Also a chapter on transparent proxying with Squid and one on LyX, covering mass insertion of cross-references and automatic index generation. IntroductionDisclaimerNo liability for the contents of this documents can be accepted. Use the concepts, examples and other content at your own risk. As this is a new edition of this document, there may be errors and inaccuracies, that may of course be damaging to your system. Proceed with caution, and although this is highly unlikely, the author does not take any responsibility for that. If it breaks, you keep both pieces.All copyrights are held by their respective owners, unless specifically noted otherwise. Use of a term in this document should not be regarded as affecting the validity of any trademark or service mark.Naming of particular products or brands should not be seen as endorsements. FormatsThis document is available in the following formats:HTML (HyperText Markup Language)HTML (HyperText Markup Language)], for viewing with any browserHTML (HyperText Markup Language)HTML (HyperText Markup Language), one big HTML fileTXT (ASCII Text)TXT (ASCII Text)], for any text editorRTF (Rich Text Format)RTF (Rich Text Format)], for WordPDF (Portable Document Format)PDF (Portable Document Format)], for printing (and viewing with Acrobat Reader)PS.GZ (Compressed Postscript)PS.GZ (Compressed Postscript)], for printing (and viewing with Ghostview)SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language)SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language)] (with the Appendix), for creating all the above formats yourselfLYX (LaTeX frontend LyX)LYX (LaTeX frontend LyX)] (with the Appendix), for typesetting it with LaTeX IMPORTANT: Downloads for offline reading! If you want to download the HTML or RTF formats for offline reading, you will need to download the images as well - PNG for HTML and BMP for RTF, including the callouts! To save you the hassle, I have compiled the following zipped tar archives for offline reading: TAR.GZ (Compressed TAR Archive), many HTML files with images TAR.GZ (Compressed TAR Archive), one big HTML file with images TAR.GZ (Compressed TAR Archive), SGML file with images TAR.GZ (Compressed TAR Archive), RTF file with imagesA tarball containing all the above is also available: TAR.GZ (Compressed TAR Archive), All files LicenceCopyright © 2003, 2004 Chris Karakas. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software FoundationFree Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license can be found in , as well as at the GNU Free Documentation License GNU0 . Availability of sources and supportSee for the modifiable sources of this document. Pose your questions in my Linux Forum! If you have questions, patches, suggestions, problems or (better) solutions, come to my Linux Forum and post them there. I look forward to your feedback! Credits is taken from W3C's working draft CSS3 Paged Media Module, version of Dec. 18th 2003 and is Copyright © 2003 W3C (MIT, ERCIM, Keio), All Rights Reserved. Used with permission according to W3C document licence.The CSS file for DocBook that is used in this document , ck-style.css uses QBullets in links. Thanks to Matterform Media for providing QBullets for free. If you plan to use them on your website, please observe the QBullets usage terms. Sexy vi

vi vs. emacs ]]> ]]> ]]> ]]> vi vs. emacs vi vs. emacs You can lend your vivi an extra sex appeal, just by tweaking some values in its configuration file, vimrcvimrc (usually located in /etc):Syntax highlightinghighlighting: Having enabled syntax highlighting, you will often find yourself trying hard to find out what is written on your screen, unless you are working on the console, or the background colour of your X terminalX terminal is black. Mine is grey (or red, for root), which makes the colourful text hard to read. In this case, you need to start vi in an xtermxterm with black as the background colour. Save the following one-liner in /usr/local/bin/bt (bt for Black Terminal...):make it executable (chmod ugo+x /usr/local/bin/bt) and from now on, just doSet multiple search: MultipleSearchMultipleSearch allows you to have the results of multiple searches displayed on the screen at the same time. Each search highlights its results in a different color, and all searches are displayed at once. After the maximum number of colors is used, the script starts over with the first color. The command syntax is ]]>which will highlight all occurrences of <pattern1> in the current buffer. A subsequent ]]>will highlight all occurrences of <pattern2> in the current bufferbuffer, retaining the highlighting of <pattern1> as well. <pattern1> and <pattern2> are any search pattern like you would use in a normal /<pattern> search. You enable Multiple Search with the following lines in the vimrc file:Further, you will have to copy the MultipleSearch.vim file from the scripts collection at www.vim.org into your local pluginsplugins (vi) directory (/usr/share/vim/current on my system) and restart vi.Set smartcase, incsearch, scrolloff, wildmode Be careful: No spaces between the options! See "longest,list" below - if you write "longest, list" you will get $ signs at the end of every line and the tabs will be shown as "^I "! For those of you who are working in the SAPŽ field: there is an ABAP/4Ž syntax highlighting script fo vi available at vim's Sourceforge page. Copy the abap.vim file into your local syntax pluginsplugins (vi), syntax directory (/usr/share/vim/current/syntax on my system) and restart vi. Happy ABAP/4Ž hacking!For more vi tips see http://www.vim.org/tips/index.php. NetscapePositioning and sizing of windows for Netscape Communicator

Netscape. ]]> ]]> ]]> ]]> Netscape. Netscape. To customise the size and position of various windows of NetscapeNetscape CommunicatorŽCommunicator 4.x, you can use the following geometry names. Add all or a part of the following values to the file ~/.Xdefaults in your home directory.The above rules are case sensitive. If you want the above rules to be global for all users, you can add them to the file /path/to/netscape/Netscape.ad. Then change to the directory /usr/X11/lib/X11/app-defaults and add a link to this file here:The above link makes sure, that it points always to the correct version of Netscape.ad, especially if you ever install a new version of Netscpe Communicator.(I have adapted this tip from http://members.aon.at/theofilu/ninst.html) Netscape roaming profiles

Netscape. ]]> ]]> ]]> ]]> Netscape. Netscape. In Apache's document root (/usr/local/httpd/htdocs), create a directory that will hold the roamingroaming profile data, set the owner and group to the user and group ID of the ApacheApache server and the permissions to 700 (read, write and change permissions only for the owner):In Apache's configuration file, /etc/httpd/httpd.conf, insert the following: ]]>handler ]]>handler_type ]]> ]]>This assumes that you want to store the roaming profilesprofile, roaming in the directory /roaming under the web server's document root (/usr/local/httpd/htdocs) and that you want to store the passwords in /etc/httpd/passwd. You may choose whatever name you like for the roaming directory and whatever location and name you wish for the password file. The roaming directory has to be located under the document root though. Change the locations above aproppriately to fit your situation.You create the password file when you create the first password using the htpasswdhtpasswd command: ]]>The -c flag creates a new file, and is necessary the first time you run htpasswd. The -m flag is optional, and forces MD5 encryption of the password. Omit the -c flag for subsequent users: ]]>Next, install the Apache::Roaming Perl module. Download it from the CPAN Apache module directory. Extract the files from the tar.gz archive:change to the newly created directory (in our case Apache-Roaming-0.1003) and typeAnswer the questions about the path of the Apache server (in my case /usr/sbin/httpd), the path of the httpd.conf file (in my case /etc/httpd/httpd.conf), the user and group ID of Apache (wwwrun and nogroup respectively, in my case - you will find those in the web server configuration file /etc/httpd/httpd.conf, as the values to the variables User and Group resp.). You may also configure the Apache::Roaming::LiPrefs module, assigning the default values you wish to preferences.At last, you need to enable roaming in Netscape: Start your communicator and open Preferences/Roaming User. Click the "Enable Roaming Access for this profile" checkbox. Open Preferences/Roaming User/Server Information. Click the "HTTP Server" checkbox and enter the Base URL http://yourwebserver/roaming/user (in my case http://bacchus/roaming/chris).Restart Netscape. Tip: If you are having problems, check that your Apache loads the Perl module. In SuSE Linux systems, this is controlled by the extra files /etc/httpd/suse_loadmodule.conf and /etc/httpd/suse_addmodule.conf. If you recompiled Apache after an initial installation, the subsequent SuSEconfig call will not overwrite these two files. Instead it will write its own version in files with the ending .SuSEconfig (e.g. /etc/httpd/suse_addmodule.conf.SuSEconfig). You are strongly advised to check the contents of those two files and copy them to the original ones: The reason is that you will be probably missing a line like in your suse_loadmodule.conf file (and a similar one in suse_addmodule.conf). How to save a HTML page as an image: from HTML to PNGNetscape 4.x is an old browser. It has many bugs (see, for example, Netscape CSS bugs, Netscape 4.x: Web Designer's worst nightmare, or why Netscape 4.x sucks) but I still use it, mainly because I am reluctunt to "change a running system" and I always see a difficulty as a challenge to resolve it. This was the case with the well-known problem of Netscape 4.x not printing the background colours of tables. Now, what if you have a nice table, whose groups of lines are coloured to convey some information about those groups? Forget printingprinting in colour - it will not work. A solution is to capturecapture, screen the screen as an image and print that image instead. This works as long as the table is small enough to fit on the screen - I had one that didn't. Since I couldn't find an image capturecapture, tool tool for Linux that will let you scrollscroll down and capture the whole page, I had to find some "HTML to PNGHTML to PNG" (or HTML to JPEG, GIF or whatever) tool. In fact, there is one: html2jpg. It converts HTML pages to images (gif, jpg, png, ps, etc..). It is a Perl scriptPerl script, ran from the command line. It requiresPerl,convertconvert, from ImageMagick,xwininfoxwininfo, xwdxwd (standard Linux utilities),OperaOpera, otherwise you have to modify the find_window() function in the script.The script is clearly written, but the last requirement poses a real problem - which I preferred not to solve. Enter html2ps...In fact, there is a much simpler way to accomplish the same thing: a pipe of html2pshtml2ps and ps2png!html2ps is contained in every distribution. It offers a variety of features:Many possibilities to control the appearance, mostly done using configuration files.Support for processing multiple documents, also automatically by recursively following links.A table of contents can be generated, either from the links in a document, or automatically from document headings.Configurable page headers/footers, that for example can contain document title, URL, page number, current heading, and date.When converting the PostScriptŽ document to PDF - using some other program such as version 5.0 or later of Aladdin GhostscriptŽGhostscript, or Adobe AcrobatDistillerŽDistiller - the original hyperlinks in the HTML documents will be retained in the PDF document.Automatic hyphenation and text justification can be selected. ...and ps2png!ps2pngps2png can be implemented in many ways, a simple one is the following short scriptCommented code is not needed, but is "nice to have" just in case. (taken from http://stud3.tuwien.ac.at/~e9902644/work/invocation.html:Now, to output both pages in one (-2 option), switch to landscape modeRemember that the original HTML page was too large for a screen dump without scrolling. (-L) and dump the contents in a PNG image with 256 colours (in order to be "web safe), we only need to type: somepage.ps ]]>You can write a html2png script containing just these two lines - and you are done! ]]> ]]> ]]> ]]> Inline graphic Restore HTML sessionsAs said above, Netscape 4.x is old. And every so often it encounters some code it cannot handle , even worse: it crashes. This will of course happen exactly when I will have 20+ HTML sessionsHTML sessions open, tracking all hyperlink branches of some original interesting page I have long forgotten. ]]> ]]> ]]> ]]> Inline graphic It is a pain to restore all lost HTML sessionssessions after a browser crash. Wouldn't it be nice if we could keep track of all visited URLs in a text file, then, after restarting the browser, just type a command that will open them all, each one in its own browser window? In fact, this is what the following script does:The remoteremote, invocation invocationinvocation, remote of Netscape is described in detail in Remote Control of UNIX Netscape, by Jamie Zawinski. CSS for DocBook SGML

Valid CSS. ]]> ]]> ]]> ]]> Valid CSS. Valid CSS. You have written your document using DocBookDocBook SGMLSGML. You have used all the available tools to transform ("render") your document to various formats, including, of course, HTML. But now you realize that your document looks somewhat "boring". It's HTML is well-written - no question. But you just can't avoid the feeling that there is still a lot that can be done to produce a more visually appealing vesrion. In fact, you need a Cascading Style SheetCascading Style Sheet, a CSS."So what's the problem?" - you might say. "I'll grab the first CSSCSS I can find and I will use it". Well, the problem is, that you will not be able to. The documents created by Jade &Co. use some classes that you will not find in every CSS file - so you will have to find the right formatting yourself.Searching the Internet did not bring many results, see for example the List of DocBook CSS at the DocBook Wiki.Those of you who would like to experiment with a CSS that works with DocBook right away may copy the following one which I use for my own documents, including the one you are reading:It incorporates important elements from the Newbiedoc CSS file for DocBook and Mark Pilgrim's influential dive into Accessibility. It is an integral part of my method of document processing with LyX and SGML, which I use for all the documents on my Homepage.You can control the navigation header style withand the navigation footer style withThe concepts of margin, border and padding follow a page model that is described in W3C's working draft CSS3 Paged Media Module, version of Dec. 18th 2003. , taken from this document (Copyright © 2003 W3C (MIT, ERCIM, Keio), All Rights Reserved) illustrates the various geometric notions of this page model. Note that the XSL area model is deliberately very similar to the CSS one.

CSS page area model. ]]> ]]> ]]> ]]> CSS page area model. CSS page area model. If you output admonitions as tables, rather than graphics (see Admonitions), then you can control their style with a code like the following (shown here for the "Important" admonition):Screen output (code) is controlled by while examples and the Table of Contents byAn "external link" icon to absolute links (i.e. links starting with "http:") is added throughHowever, this alone would put the icon on every link with an absolute URL, including links pointing to the local domain. This is corrected by"External link" icons tell you what a link will do before you click on it. There are icons specifically designed for this purpose, like QBullets. QBullets are a collection of elegant, animated icons that attach to hypertext links to indicate their function. You can download Qbullets for free from matterform media.To use this idea for footnotes, the name attribute is used as a selector:This will select all links whose href attribute starts with "#FTN" and append a note icon to them, which will even show an animated page curl upon passing with the mouse over it (hover). The links whose href attribute starts with "#FTN" look like [1] ]]>and point to a footnote. The footnote itself also contains a link - which points back to the referring text. That link will not be affected by the above selection, since its href attribute does not start with "#FTN" :[1] ]]>To display a back icon besides those links, a selector on the name attribute is used: String matching on attributes is a CSS3 feature! To be able to use string matching on attributes, as we have done in the QBullets examples above, the user must view our document with a browser that supports this CSS3 feature. If you are wondering whether your browser belongs to this cutting edge category (Mozilla 1.5 does, tip, tip ]]> ]]> ]]> ]]> Inline graphic ), you can do this W3C browser test on CSS selectors and test for "Substring matching attribute selector". To get an icon in place of the usual bullet in itemized lists, the list-style property is used for the UL tag:Last but not least, a cross-browser relative font setting can be achieved with BODY P { ]]>which is indeed too complicated to explain here in all its depth. See Dive into Accessibility, day 26 for this. Transparent proxying with Squid

Squid. ]]> ]]> ]]> ]]> Squid. Squid. I assume you have already set up a Squid proxy and a firewall and that both work correctly. You may now wish to force all your users to use the Squid proxy for surfing the WWW. This is what "transparent proxying" is about: your users surf, even without having defined a proxy in their browser settings, but they in fact all use the transparent proxy and don't notice it.To enable transparent proxyingproxying, transparent with SquidSquid, insert the following lines in the configuration file (squid.conf, usually in /etc) at the aproppriate place (search the configuration file for the respective keywords, httpd_accel_hosthttpd_accel_host, httpd_accel_with_proxyhttpd_accel_with_proxy and httpd_accel_uses_host_headerhttpd_accel_uses_host_header):You will also need to accept and redirectredirect the WWW traffic to port 3128 of the Squid proxy:or, if you use SuSEfirewall2SuSEfirewall2Restart Squid and the firewall. Transparent proxying should be working now. However there are some issues associated with the above settings. You can read about them in the corresponding comments in the squid.conf file.For more details, see the Transparent Proxy HOWTO. LyX

LyX. ]]> ]]> ]]> ]]> LyX. LyX. In case you are wondering what LyX is, here is what http://www.lyx.org says on the subject:

LyX is an advanced open source document processor that encourages an approach to writing based on the structure of your documents, not their appearance. LyX lets you concentrate on writing, leaving details of visual layout to the software.LyX runs on many Unix platforms, OS/2, and under Windows/Cygwin (this port requires an X server). It can also run natively on Mac OS X, thanks to the Qt/Mac library.LyX produces high quality, professional output -- using LaTeX, an industrial strength typesetting engine, in the background; LyX is far more than a front-end to LaTeX, however. No knowledge of LaTeX is necessary to use LyX, although it will give a user more power.LyX is stable and fully featured. It has been used for documents as large as a thesis, or as small as a business letter. Despite its simple GUI interface (available in many languages), it supports tables, figures, and hyperlinked cross-references, and has a best-of-breed math editor.

Mass insertion of cross-references in LyXIf you have to add hundreds of cross-references in just one section (e.g. more than 500, as in Credits for version 2.0 of the PHP-Nuke HOWTO), you will soon notice that, although a single cross-reference is inserted very easily in LyX (just choose Insert->Cross-reference from the menu, then choose the label of the reference you want), it becomes a real pain if you have to enter hundreds of them.My solution to this was to write a script that reads a LyX file and outputs another LyX file that contains references to all labels of the first one. It was then easier to copy the references from the file thus created, paste them in Credits for version 2.0 of the PHP-Nuke HOWTO and then delete the unneeded ones, than try to insert all cross-references by hand using the LyX menu.The following script, call it lyxrefs, will print a LyX file in standard output, containing cross-references to each and every label of the LyX file whose name was passed on the command line as argument: all-references.tmp ]]> fig-references.tmp ]]> tab-references.tmp ]]>The script will even create three sections, with cross-references to all labels, all figures and all tables respectively. If you named it lyxrefs, you would call it as follows: refs.lyx ]]>Then refs.lyx will contain cross-references to all labels of some-LyX-file.lyx. You can open refs.lyx with LyX, copy all or part of the cross-references there and paste them in some-LyX-file.lyx. The cross-references in Credits for version 2.0 of the PHP-Nuke HOWTO were entered this way. Automatic Index generationLyX provides an easy way to insert an IndexIndex entry: from the menu, choose either Insert-->"Index entry of preceding word" (which I personally find easier), or Insert-->"Index entry", then enter the required word. This method works fine - if you have a small document, with only a few keywords to insert. But what if your document has grown to hundreds of pages, with hundreds (or even thousands) of index entries to insert? See the Index of the PHP-Nuke HOWTO for an example of an Index that cannot be generated manually - unless you want to drive yourself crazy!Clearly, for a comprehensive Index of large documents, an automaticautomatic procedure is necessary. However, the general problem of automatic Index generation is subject of extensive (and still not conclusive) research and I am not going to address it in its full generality here. For our purposes, even a semi-automatic procedure would be very helpful. To this end, I have created the following 4 scripts:sedscr_list_index_items: lists all index entries contained in a LyX document.sedscr_delete_index_items: deletes all index entries from a LyX document.awkscr_create_index_items: creates a list of words used in a LyX document. The list can be subsequently edited manually, mostly deleting unwanted or uninteresting words, to yield a list of words that are used in the document and are interesting enough to be part of its Index.awkscr_insert_index_items: uses an externally supplied document containing a list of index entries to insert an index entry in a LyX document for every word appearing in that list.They can be used in the following semi-automatic Index generation procedure: Optional: create a list of all existing index entries in your document. This is useful not only because you are going to eliminate all index entries from the document in the next step, but also as a backup of the index entries that were currently in use - you might want to reuse them in some later step.To create a list of all existing index entries in your document, type: indexitems ]]>The generated indexitems file will contain a list of all index entries in document.lyx, one index entry per line.Remove all previous index entries from the LyX document. You need this preliminary step because, if you forget to remove already existing index entries, a subsequent run of the awkscr_insert_index_items script may substitute even the existing index terms (those already inside the LyX \index commands) with LyX \index commands. This may or may not happen, depending on the regular expressions used in the current implementation of awkscr_insert_index_items, but it is better to err on the side of caution. Besides, a LyX text cluttered with index entries may still be a breeze to read for a computer, but quite a headache to read for humans.To remove all index entries from a LyX document, type: document-noindexitems.lyx ]]>The generated document-noindexitems.lyx will contain everything from document.lyx - except the index entries.Create a list of all index entries to be used in the LyX document. This is the most difficult part: as said above, this problem is not trivial. We will thus content ourselves with a list of all words used in the document. Once we have all words, we can still edit the list manually and delete all unwanted entries. This is what makes this procedure semi-automatic and not automatic. The idea is that it is still better having to delete 10000 lines from a 12000 line document, than having to insert 2000 index entries from the LyX Insert menu.To create a list of all words used in a LyX document, type: words ]]>There is even some code in awkscr_create_index_items that checks whether the current word is in some "trivia" list of trivial words and discards it. In such a case, you would call the script with two arguments, as follows: words ]]>However, this part of the code is either too slow, or buggy, so it is commented for the moment (feel free to send corrections or suggestions).Once the list of all words of your document is created, all you have to do is open it with a text editor and delete all unwanted words or correct the ones that are in plural or have some punctuation at the end and so on. This is still hard if your document is large, but still a faster alternative than targeting the Insert menu with the mouse 8000 times (I guess each one of my 2000 index entries appears 4 times in my document, which gives me an estimate of 8000 menu selections with the mouse - unfortunately no keyboard bindings were found to work on my system).Once you have a file, say indexitems, with all words that should appear in the Index of a LyX file, type: document-indexitems.lyx ]]>to create from document-noindexitems.lyx a document with index entries (document-indexitems.lyx) for all words in indexitems. Some notes on awkscr_insert_index_items's mode of operation: The "-" in the above invocation is important: it forces the awk script to continue reading from standard input, after it has read indexitems. This, together with the codein awkscr_insert_index_items, causes the words in indexitems to be imported into the indexentry[] associative array.The file separatorseparator in awkscr_insert_index_items is set to the semicolon ";", instead of the default, which is space. This makes it possible to enter index entries with more than one words. Accordingly, the awkscr_create_index_items script appends a semicolon at the end of each word it prints.awkscr_insert_index_items follows a simple algorithm to insert the index entries at the right places in the document: to insert an index entry, we have to know what LyX environment we are in. In essence, this means we have to parse the LyX document. Since the \layout commands in the LyX file do NOT have what we would call "closing tags" in other markupmarkup languages, we cannot tell awk "if you are between the start and the end of the Paragraph environment, do the following", or anything like that - there is no easy way to find the "end " of an environment, given all the environment nestingsnestings that are possible. Luckily, another easy way exists: whenever a \layout command is encountered, we are in the environment specified by that \layout command, so we only need to set a variable, call it layout, accordingly:Clearly, we should not insert index entries everywhere, e.g. in the "Code" environment. That's why we check if we are in the "Standard", "Itemize", "Quotation", "Description" environment (warning: the way sedscr works currently, you should not insert index entries in the "Caption" environment) and, if we are (and only then), we substiture every word in the indexentry[] array with the LyX "insert index entry" command:Some tips regarding the (necessary) manual editing of the words file, the file output by awkscr_create_index_items above: You will see a lot of words (or their declinations) that are not useful. It is one thing to have a lot of words and another to have a set of really useful words and phrases. That's the price we pay for the simplicity of our method.You may need to supply some extra terms you feel are missing from that file. Feel free to do this, awkscr_insert_index_items does not know how you created the indexitems file you give it. Keep backups of your word lists from subsequent runs of the scripts. Combine word lists from other projects. No matter how long your word list, only the terms that really appear somewhere, will make it to the Index, so don't worry if your list is too long - given enough computing time, that is.Take care to delete everything in your word list that looks like a regular expression with metacharacters - because it will be interpreted as such, with unpredictable results (unless you really know what you are doing). I once had ".*" on one line and I forgot to delete it. I then wondered how come that my document was full of index entries to ".*" while the text was almost gone! See regular expressions, for a brief introduction to regular expressions.Take out any ":", ";", "?" from the end of the words, as well as enclosing double quotes. Those characters are already taken care of when it comes to inserting the entries, i.e. the indexentries file should contain only the "pure" words, without any punctuation signs. Don't leave in "config" if your LyX file contains "config.php". If you do, the latter will look ugly in the LyX editor, as it will contain an index entry for "config" just in the middle of it. This will not affect the rendered formats, however.Don't leave in words that might form parts of a LyX command. I once left "Enumerate" in my word list. The resulting LyX file contained an index entry for "Enumerate" in front of every item in every enumeration list! Clearly, the awk script "sees" the LyX commands in the file that are invisible to you. &appendix; &bibliography; &index;