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Whilst reading the manual for MakeIndex I stumbled upon:

MakeIndex assumes that all page numbers are either arabic or lower-case roman numerals; it assumes that pages numbered with roman numerals precede those numbered with arabic numerals.

and wondered... how can I lift this restriction? Specifically: how can I tell MakeIndex to not verify the page numbering format?

For instance, if I have an index entry on an \alph page.

I'm open to suggestions regarding alternative indexing preprocessors, but they should work with hyperref (ruling out xindy if memory serves).

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It's a limitation of MakeIndex, yes. Why isn't xindy a choice? –  egreg Dec 31 '11 at 20:54
As far as I remember xindy had no support for hyperref... please do correct me if I'm wrong! :) –  mpr Dec 31 '11 at 21:00
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up vote 6 down vote accepted

The following test.tex document compiles perfectly and all the page references have their hyperlink:












Of course imakeidx is not necessary, I used it just for doing everything in one step, running

pdflatex --shell-escape test

Pages with alphabetic numbering are sorted after arabic numbered ones, which come after roman numbered ones, but I guess it's possible to customize Xindy's behavior.

On the other hand, the same result is obtained with MakeIndex.

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This, sir, is one great answer :) –  mpr Jan 1 '12 at 0:00
@egreg: Why texindy? In other words, why not xindy? –  Sony Jan 1 '12 at 1:09
@Sony It's a script that calls xindy after some common initializations relative to LaTeX usage –  egreg Jan 1 '12 at 10:48
@egreg: Thanks. I will ask a (detailed) question to get a more detailed answer. :) –  Sony Jan 2 '12 at 0:51
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