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Indexing ¶

Use the following two commands.

• @cindex … – for the general index
• @funindex … – for commands and properties like \bar or left-margin

Here are some rules how index entries should look like.

• Only capitalize the first word of a @cindex entry if you would do so in the middle of an English sentence. Examples:

  @cindex ancient clef
  @cindex Kievan clef
  

  @funindex entries are written as-is; don’t omit the leading backslash if there is one.

• Use singular forms as much as possible. After a comma, use whatever looks better. Examples:

  @cindex clef
  @cindex fingering instruction, for chords
  

• Permute index entries if it makes sense. Example:

  @cindex ancient note head
  @cindex note head, ancient
  

• Try to make entries fit into groups so that the printed index looks like this:

  ...
  text, framing
  text, horizontal alignment
  text, in columns
  text, in volta bracket
  text, justified
  ...
  

• Don’t insert @funindex{\foo} and @cindex{\foo} simultaneously.
• If both foo and \foo need to be indexed with @funindex you have to use the @funindexpre or @funindexpost command: @funindexpre foo gets sorted before @funindex \foo, and @funindexpost \foo gets sorted after @funindex foo. Example:

  @funindex [
  @funindexpost \[
  

• To index \\ you must write

  @funindex @backslashchar{}@backslashchar{}
  

  so that the backslash characters are not swallowed by LilyPond’s Texinfo macro setup.

• If you mention entities in a @cindex entry that would normally be entered with @funindex, use @code to mark them. Example:

  @cindex @code{\context}, in @code{\layout} block
  

• To get a literal ‘{’ or ‘}’ in an index, write @{ and @}, respectively.
• If an index entry starts with an accented character, use a Texinfo accent macro instead of the real character. For example, an index entry for ‘Äolisch’ should be entered as

  @cindex @"Aolisch
  

  to circumvent a problem with texindex (used by Texinfo to sort and unify index entries in PDF output): as of October 2026, this command has no support for locale-specific collation. In the above example, the entry is now sorted as ‘Aolisch’.

  In case this is not sufficient it is always possible to explicitly specify a sorting key using the @sortas command: Assuming that entries starting with letter ‘ä’ must be sorted after all entries starting with letter ‘a’, writing

  @cindex @sortas{azzzAolisch} Äolisch
  

  would make this work. Unfortunately, this trick doesn’t create an initial letter in the printed index for entries starting with ‘Ä’.