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.
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).
The splitidx package (which comes with a small executable splitindex available for a variety of platforms) is another alternative. It supports the sorts of things that the index package does, but is not limited by the number of output streams (La)TeX can have open at any one time.