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.
To create a "general" and an "authors" index, one might write:
\usepackage{multind}
\makeindex{general}
\makeindex{authors}
...
\index{authors}{Robin Fairbairns}
...
\index{general}{FAQs}
...
\printindex{general}{General index}
\printindex{authors}{Author index}
To complete the job, run LaTeX on your file enough times that
labels, etc., are stable, and then execute the commands
before running LaTeX again. Note that the names of the index files to process are not necessarily related to the name of the LaTeX file you're processing, at all. (There's no documentation that comes with the package: what you see above is as good as you will get...)makeindex general makeindex authors
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).
Using index, to create an author index together with a "normal" index, one would start with preamble commands:
\usepackage{index}
\makeindex
\newindex{aut}{adx}{and}{Name Index}
which load the package, define a "main" (original-style) index, and
then define an author index. Then, in the body of the document, we
might find commands like:
\index[aut]{Robin Fairbairns}
...
\index{FAQs}
Which place an entry in the author index, and then one in the main
index. At the end of the document, we have two commands:
Which will print the main index and then the author index. Supposing this lot to be in myfile.tex, after enough runs through LaTeX that labels are stable, execute the following commands (Unix-style shell commands shown here, but the principle is the same whatever system you're using):\printindex \printindex[aut]
and rerun LaTeX. The makeindex commands process myfile.idx to myfile.ind (the default action), and then myfile.adx to myfile.and, the two files needed as input by the twomakeindex myfile makeindex myfile.adx -o myfile.and
\printindex commands in myfile.tex.
The splitidx package can operate in the same way as the
others: load the package with the split option, and
declare each index with a \newindex command:
and splitidx will generate a file\newindex[<index name>]{<shortcut>}
\jobname.<shortcut> to receive index entries
generated by commands like \sindex[<shortcut>]{<item>}.
As with the other packages, this method is limited by TeX's total
number of output files. However, splitindex also comes with
a small executable splitindex (available for a variety of
operating systems); if you use this auxiliary program (and don't use
split), there's no limit to the number of indexes. Apart
from this trick, splitidx supports the same sorts of things
as does index. An example of use appears in
the documentation.
The memoir class has its own multiple-index functionality (as well as index layout options, which other packages delegate to the index style used by makeindex.
This question on the Web: http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=multind