## User Manual for glossaries.sty v4.15

Nicola L.C. Talbot
http://www.dickimaw-books.com/
2015-03-16

Abstract

The glossaries package provides a means to define terms or acronyms or symbols that can be referenced within your document. Sorted lists with collated locations can be generated either using TEX or using a supplementary indexing application.

If you require multilingual support you must also install the relevant language module. Each language module is called glossaries-⟨language⟩, where ⟨language⟩ is the root language name. For example, glossaries-french or glossaries-german. If a language module is required, the glossaries package will automatically try to load it and will give a warning if the module isn’t found. See §1.3 Multi-Lingual Support for further details.

Documents have various styles when it comes to presenting glossaries or lists of terms or notation. People have their own preferences and to a large extent this is determined by the kind of information that needs to go in the glossary. They may just have symbols with terse descriptions or they may have long technical words with complicated descriptions. The glossaries package is flexible enough to accommodate such varied requirements, but this flexibility comes at a price: a big manual.

😱 If you’re freaking out at the size of this manual, start with glossariesbegin.pdf (“The glossaries package: a guide for beginnners”). You should find it in the same directory as this document or try texdoc glossariesbegin.pdf. Once you’ve got to grips with the basics, then come back to this manual to find out how to adjust the settings.

The glossaries bundle comes with the following documentation:

glossariesbegin.pdf
  If you are a complete beginner, start with “The glossaries package: a guide for beginners”.
glossary2glossaries.pdf
  If you are moving over from the obsolete glossary package, read “Upgrading from the glossary package to the glossaries package”.
glossaries-user.pdf
  This document is the main user guide for the glossaries package.
mfirstuc-manual.pdf
  The commands provided by the mfirstuc package are briefly described in “mfirstuc.sty: uppercasing first letter”.
glossaries-code.pdf
  Advanced users wishing to know more about the inner workings of all the packages provided in the glossaries bundle should read “Documented Code for glossaries v4.15”. This includes the documented code for the mfirstuc package.
INSTALL
  Installation instructions.
CHANGES
  Change log.
README
  Package summary.

If you use hyperref and glossaries, you must load hyperref first. Similarly the doc package must also be loaded before glossaries. (If doc is loaded, the file extensions for the default main glossary are changed to gls2, glo2 and .glg2 to avoid conflict with doc’s changes glossary.)

If you are using hyperref, it’s best to use pdflatex rather than latex (DVI format) as pdflatex deals with hyperlinks much better. If you use the DVI format, you will encounter problems where you have long hyperlinks or hyperlinks in subscripts or superscripts. This is an issue with the DVI format not with glossaries.

Other documents that describe using the glossaries package include: Using LaTeX to Write a PhD Thesis and Glossaries, Nomenclature, Lists of Symbols and Acronyms.

## Contents

Glossary
1 Introduction
1.1 Sample Documents
1.2 Dummy Entries for Testing
1.3 Multi-Lingual Support
1.3.1 Changing the Fixed Names
1.4 Generating the Associated Glossary Files
1.4.1 Using the makeglossaries Perl Script
1.4.2 Using xindy explicitly (Option 3)
1.4.3 Using makeindex explicitly (Option 2)
1.4.4 Note to Front-End and Script Developers
2 Package Options
2.1 General Options
2.2 Sectioning, Headings and TOC Options
2.3 Glossary Appearance Options
2.4 Sorting Options
2.5 Acronym Options
2.5.1 Deprecated Acronym Style Options
2.6 Other Options
2.7 Setting Options After the Package is Loaded
3 Setting Up
3.1 Option 1
3.2 Options 2 and 3
4 Defining Glossary Entries
4.1 Plurals
4.2 Other Grammatical Constructs
4.3 Additional Keys
4.4 Expansion
4.5 Sub-Entries
4.5.1 Hierarchical Categories
4.5.2 Homographs
4.6 Loading Entries From a File
4.7 Moving Entries to Another Glossary
4.8 Drawbacks With Defining Entries in the Document Environment
4.8.1 Technical Issues
4.8.2 Good Practice Issues
5 Number lists
6 Links to Glossary Entries
6.1 The \gls-Like Commands (First Use Flag Queried)
6.2 The \glstext-Like Commands (First Use Flag Not Queried)
6.3 Changing the format of the link text
6.4 Enabling and disabling hyperlinks to glossary entries
7 Adding an Entry to the Glossary Without Generating Text
8 Cross-Referencing Entries
8.1 Customising Cross-reference Text
9 Using Glossary Terms Without Links
10 Displaying a glossary
11 Xindy (Option 3)
11.1 Language and Encodings
11.2 Locations and Number lists
11.3 Glossary Groups
12 Defining New Glossaries
13 Acronyms
13.1 Changing the Acronym Style
13.1.1 Predefined Acronym Styles
13.1.2 Defining A Custom Acronym Style
13.2 Displaying the List of Acronyms
13.3 Upgrading From the glossary Package
14 Unsetting and Resetting Entry Flags
14.1 Counting the Number of Times an Entry has been Used (First Use Flag Unset)
15 Glossary Styles
15.1 Predefined Styles
15.1.1 List Styles
15.1.2 Longtable Styles
15.1.3 Longtable Styles (Ragged Right)
15.1.4 Supertabular Styles
15.1.5 Supertabular Styles (Ragged Right)
15.1.6 Tree-Like Styles
15.1.7 Multicols Style
15.1.8 In-Line Style
15.2 Defining your own glossary style
16 Utilities
17 Prefixes or Determiners
18 Accessibility Support
19 Troubleshooting
Index

## List of Tables

1.1 Glossary Options: Pros and Cons
1.2 Customised Text
1.3 Commands and package options that have no effect when using xindy or makeindex explicitly
4.1 Key to Field Mappings
6.1 Predefined Hyperlinked Location Formats
13.1 Synonyms provided by the package option shortcuts
13.2 The effect of using xspace
15.1 Glossary Styles
15.2 Multicolumn Styles

## Glossary

This glossary style was setup using:

\usepackage[ | xindy,

| nonumberlist,

| toc,

| nopostdot,

| style=altlist,

| nogroupskip]{glossaries}

Command Line Interface (CLI)
  An application that doesn’t have a graphical user interface. That is, an application that doesn’t have any windows, buttons or menus and can be run in a command prompt or terminal.
Entry location
  The location of the entry in the document. This defaults to the page number on which the entry appears. An entry may have multiple locations.
Extended Latin Alphabet
  An alphabet consisting of Latin characters and extended Latin characters.
Extended Latin Character
  A character that’s created by combining Latin characters to form ligatures (e.g. æ) or by applying diacritical marks to a Latin character or characters (e.g. á or ø). See also non-Latin character.
First use
  The first time a glossary entry is used (from the start of the document or after a reset) with one of the following commands: \gls, \Gls, \GLS, \glspl, \Glspl, \GLSpl or \glsdisp. (See first use flag & first use text.)
First use flag
  A conditional that determines whether or not the entry has been used according to the rules of first use. Commands to unset or reset this conditional are described in §14 Unsetting and Resetting Entry Flags.
First use text
  The text that is displayed on first use, which is governed by the first and firstplural keys of \newglossaryentry. (May be overridden by \glsdisp or by \defglsentry.)
Indexing application
  An application (piece of software) separate from TEX/LA TEX that collates and sorts information that has an associated page reference. Generally the information is an index entry but in this case the information is a glossary entry. There are two main indexing applications that are used with TEX: makeindex and xindy. These are both command line interface (CLI) applications.
Latin Alphabet
  The alphabet consisting of Latin characters. See also extended Latin alphabet.
Latin Character
  One of the letters a, …, z, A, …, Z. See also extended Latin character.
Link text
  The text produced by commands such as \gls. It may or may not be a hyperlink to the glossary.
makeglossaries
  A custom designed Perl script interface to xindy and makeindex provided with the glossaries package.
makeglossariesgui
  A Java GUI alternative to makeglossaries that also provides diagnostic tools. Available separately on CTAN.
makeindex
  An indexing application.
Non-Latin Alphabet
  An alphabet consisting of non-Latin characters.
Non-Latin Character
  An extended Latin character or a character that isn’t a Latin character.
Number list
  A list of entry locations (also called a location list). The number list can be suppressed using the nonumberlist package option.
Sanitize
  Converts command names into character sequences. That is, a command called, say, \foo, is converted into the sequence of characters: \, f, o, o. Depending on the font, the backslash character may appear as a dash when used in the main document text, so \foo will appear as: —foo.

  Earlier versions of glossaries used this technique to write information to the files used by the indexing applications to prevent problems caused by fragile commands. Now, this is only used for the sort key.

Standard L A T E X Extended Latin Character
  An extended Latin character that can be created by a core LA TEX command, such as \o (ø) or \’e (é). That is, the character can be produced without the need to load a particular package.
xindy
  A flexible indexing application with multilingual support written in Perl.

## 1. Introduction

The glossaries package is provided to assist generating lists of terms, symbols or abbreviations (glossaries). It has a certain amount of flexibility, allowing the user to customize the format of the glossary and define multiple glossaries. It also supports glossary styles that include symbols (in addition to a name and description) for glossary entries. There is provision for loading a database of glossary terms. Only those terms used1.1 in the document will be added to the glossary.

This package replaces the glossary package which is now obsolete. Please see the document “Upgrading from the glossary package to the glossaries package” for assistance in upgrading.

One of the strengths of this package is its flexibility, however the drawback of this is the necessity of having a large manual that can cover all the various settings. If you are daunted by the size of the manual, try starting off with the much shorter guide for beginners.

There’s a common misconception that you have to have Perl installed in order to use the glossaries package. Perl is not a requirement but it does increase the available options, particularly if you use an extended Latin alphabet or a non-Latin alphabet.

The basic idea behind the glossaries package is that you first define your entries (terms, symbols or abbreviations). Then you can reference these within your document (like \cite or \ref). You can also, optionally, display a list of the entries you have referenced in your document (the glossary). This last part, displaying the glossary, is the part that most new users find difficult. There are three options:

  Option 1:

  This is the simplest option but it’s slow and if you want a sorted list, it doesn’t work well for extended Latin alphabets or non-Latin alphabets. However, if you use the sanitizesort=false package option (the default for Option 1) then the standard LA TEX accent commands will be ignored, so if an entry’s name is set to {\’e}lite then the sort will default to elite if sanitizesort=false is used and will default to \’elite if sanitizesort=true is used.

  1. Add \makenoidxglossaries to your preamble (before you start defining your entries, as described in §4 Defining Glossary Entries).
  2. Put

     \printnoidxglossary

     where you want your list of entries to appear (described in §10 Displaying a glossary).

  3. Run LA TEX twice on your document. (As you would do to make a table of contents appear.) For example, click twice on the “typeset” or “build” or “PDFLA TEX” button in your editor.
  Option 2:

  This option uses a command line interface (CLI) application called makeindex to sort the entries. This application comes with all modern TEX distributions, but it’s hard-coded for the non-extended Latin alphabet, so it doesn’t work well for extended Latin alphabets or non-Latin alphabets. This process involves making LA TEX write the glossary information to a temporary file which makeindex reads. Then makeindex writes a new file containing the code to typeset the glossary. LA TEX then reads this file in on the next run.

  1. Add \makeglossaries to your preamble (before you start defining your entries, as described in §4 Defining Glossary Entries).
  2. Put

     \printglossary

     where you want your list of entries to appear (described in §10 Displaying a glossary).

  3. Run LA TEX on your document. This creates files with the extensions .glo and .ist (for example, if your LA TEX document is called myDoc.tex, then you’ll have two extra files called myDoc.glo and myDoc.ist). If you look at your document at this point, you won’t see the glossary as it hasn’t been created yet.
  4. Run makeindex with the .glo file as the input file and the .ist file as the style so that it creates an output file with the extension .gls. If you have access to a terminal or a command prompt (for example, the MSDOS command prompt for Windows users or the bash console for Unix-like users) then you need to run the command:
     makeindex -s myDoc.ist -o myDoc.gls myDoc.glo

     (Replace myDoc with the base name of your LA TEX document file. Avoid spaces in the file name.) If you don’t know how to use the command prompt, then you can probably access makeindex via your text editor, but each editor has a different method of doing this, so I can’t give a general description. You will have to check your editor’s manual.

     The default sort is word order (“sea lion” comes before “seal”). If you want letter ordering you need to add the -l switch:

     makeindex -l -s myDoc.ist -o myDoc.gls myDoc.glo

     (See §1.4.3 Using makeindex explicitly (Option 2) for further details on using makeindex explicitly.)

  5. Once you have successfully completed the previous step, you can now run LA TEX on your document again.

  This is the default option (although you still need to use \makeglossaries to ensure the glossary files are created).

  Option 3:

  This option uses a CLI application called xindy to sort the entries. This application is more flexible than makeindex and is able to sort extended Latin alphabets or non-Latin alphabets. The xindy application comes with TEX Live but not with MiKTEX. Since xindy is a Perl script, if you are using MiKTEX you will not only need to install xindy, you will also need to install Perl. In a similar way to Option 2, this option involves making LA TEX write the glossary information to a temporary file which xindy reads. Then xindy writes a new file containing the code to typeset the glossary. LA TEX then reads this file in on the next run.

  1. Add the xindy option to the glossaries package option list:
     \usepackage[xindy]{glossaries}

  2. Add \makeglossaries to your preamble (before you start defining your entries, as described in §4 Defining Glossary Entries).
  3. Run LA TEX on your document. This creates files with the extensions .glo and .xdy (for example, if your LA TEX document is called myDoc.tex, then you’ll have two extra files called myDoc.glo and myDoc.xdy). If you look at your document at this point, you won’t see the glossary as it hasn’t been created yet.
  4. Run xindy with the .glo file as the input file and the .xdy file as a module so that it creates an output file with the extension .gls. You also need to set the language name and input encoding. If you have access to a terminal or a command prompt (for example, the MSDOS command prompt for Windows users or the bash console for Unix-like users) then you need to run the command (all on one line):
     xindy -L english -C utf8 -I xindy -M myDoc
     -t myDoc.glg -o myDoc.gls myDoc.glo

     (Replace myDoc with the base name of your LA TEX document file. Avoid spaces in the file name. If necessary, also replace english with the name of your language and utf8 with your input encoding.) If you don’t know how to use the command prompt, then you can probably access xindy via your text editor, but each editor has a different method of doing this, so I can’t give a general description. You will have to check your editor’s manual.

     The default sort is word order (“sea lion” comes before “seal”). If you want letter ordering you need to add the order=letter package option:

     \usepackage[xindy,order=letter]{glossaries}

     (See §1.4.2 Using xindy explicitly (Option 3) for further details on using xindy explicitly.)

  5. Once you have successfully completed the previous step, you can now run LA TEX on your document again.

For Options 2 and 3, it can be difficult to remember all the parameters required for makeindex or xindy, so the glossaries package provides a script called makeglossaries that reads the .aux file to determine what settings you have used and will then run makeindex or xindy. Again, this is a command line application and can be run in a terminal or command prompt. For example, if your LA TEX document is in the file myDoc.tex, then run:

makeglossaries myDoc

(Replace myDoc with the base name of your LA TEX document file. Avoid spaces in the file name.) This is described in more detail in §1.4 Generating the Associated Glossary Files.

The .gls and .glo are temporary files created to help build your document. You should not edit or explicitly input them. However, you may need to delete them if something goes wrong and you need to do a fresh build.

An overview of these three options is given in table 1.1.

Table 1.1: Glossary Options: Pros and Cons

| Option 1 | Option 2 | Option 3
Requires an external application? | ✘ | ✔ | ✔
Requires Perl? | ✘ | ✘ | ✔
Can sort extended Latin alphabets or non-Latin alphabets? | ✘† | ✘ | ✔
Efficient sort algorithm? | ✘ | ✔ | ✔
Can use a different sort method for each glossary? | ✔ | ✘ | ✘
Can form ranges in the location lists? | ✘ | ✔ | ✔
Can have non-standard locations in the location lists? | ✔ | ✘ | ✔
Maximum hierarchical depth | Unlimited | 3 | Unlimited
\glsdisplaynumberlist reliable? | ✔ | ✘ | ✘
\newglossaryentry restricted to preamble? | ✔ | ✘ | ✘
Requires additional write registers? | ✘ | ✔ | ✔
Default value of sanitizesort package option | false | true | true

† Strips standard LA TEX accents (that is, accents generated by core LA TEX commands) so, for example, \AA is treated the same as A.

This document uses the glossaries package. For example, when viewing the PDF version of this document in a hyperlinked-enabled PDF viewer (such as Adobe Reader or Okular) if you click on the word “xindy” you’ll be taken to the entry in the glossary where there’s a brief description of the term “xindy”.

The remainder of this introductory section covers the following:

- §1.1 Sample Documents lists the sample documents provided with this package.
- §1.3 Multi-Lingual Support provides information for users who wish to write in a language other than English.
- §1.4 Generating the Associated Glossary Files describes how to use an indexing application to create the sorted glossaries for your document (Options 2 or 3).

Top

###

### 1.1 Sample Documents

The glossaries package is provided with some sample documents that illustrate the various functions. These should be located in the samples subdirectory (folder) of the glossaries documentation directory. This location varies according to your operating system and TEX distribution. You can use texdoc to locate the main glossaries documentation. For example, in a terminal or command prompt, type:
texdoc -l glossaries

This should display a list of all the files in the glossaries documentation directory with their full pathnames.

If you can’t find the sample files on your computer, they are also available from your nearest CTAN mirror at http://mirror.ctan.org/macros/latex/contrib/glossaries/samples/.

The sample documents are as follows1.2:

minimalgls.tex
  This document is a minimal working example. You can test your installation using this file. To create the complete document you will need to do the following steps:
  1. Run minimalgls.tex through LA TEX either by typing
     latex minimalgls

     in a terminal or by using the relevant button or menu item in your text editor or front-end. This will create the required associated files but you will not see the glossary. If you use PDFLA TEX you will also get warnings about non-existent references that look something like:

     pdfTeX warning (dest): name{glo:aca} has been
     referenced but does not exist,
     replaced by a fixed one

     These warnings may be ignored on the first run.

     If you get a Missing \begin{document} error, then it’s most likely that your version of xkeyval is out of date. Check the log file for a warning of that nature. If this is the case, you will need to update the xkeyval package.

  2. Run makeglossaries on the document (§1.4 Generating the Associated Glossary Files). This can be done on a terminal either by typing
     makeglossaries minimalgls

     or by typing
     perl makeglossaries minimalgls

     If your system doesn’t recognise the command perl then it’s likely you don’t have Perl installed. In which case you will need to use makeindex directly. You can do this in a terminal by typing (all on one line):
     makeindex -s minimalgls.ist -t minimalgls.glg -o minimalgls.gls minimalgls.glo

     (See §1.4.3 Using makeindex explicitly (Option 2) for further details on using makeindex explicitly.)

     Note that if you need to specify the full path and the path contains spaces, you will need to delimit the file names with the double-quote character.

  3. Run minimalgls.tex through LA TEX again (as step 1)

  You should now have a complete document. The number following each entry in the glossary is the location number. By default, this is the page number where the entry was referenced.

sample-noidx.tex
  This document illustrates how to use the glossaries package without an external indexing application (Option 1). To create the complete document, you need to do:
  latex sample-noidx
  latex sample-noidx

sample-noidx-utf8.tex
  As the previous example, except that it uses the inputenc package. To create the complete document, you need to do:
  latex sample-noidx-utf8
  latex sample-noidx-utf8

sample4col.tex
  This document illustrates a four column glossary where the entries have a symbol in addition to the name and description. To create the complete document, you need to do:
  latex sample4col
  makeglossaries sample4col
  latex sample4col

  As before, if you don’t have Perl installed, you will need to use makeindex directly instead of using makeglossaries. The vertical gap between entries is the gap created at the start of each group. This can be suppressed using the nogroupskip package option.

sampleAcr.tex
  This document has some sample acronyms. It also adds the glossary to the table of contents, so an extra run through LA TEX is required to ensure the document is up to date:
  latex sampleAcr
  makeglossaries sampleAcr
  latex sampleAcr
  latex sampleAcr

sampleAcrDesc.tex
  This is similar to the previous example, except that the acronyms have an associated description. As with the previous example, the glossary is added to the table of contents, so an extra run through LA TEX is required:
  latex sampleAcrDesc
  makeglossaries sampleAcrDesc
  latex sampleAcrDesc
  latex sampleAcrDesc

sampleDesc.tex
  This is similar to the previous example, except that it defines the acronyms using \newglossaryentry instead of \newacronym. As with the previous example, the glossary is added to the table of contents, so an extra run through LA TEX is required:
  latex sampleDesc
  makeglossaries sampleDesc
  latex sampleDesc
  latex sampleDesc

sampleCustomAcr.tex
  This document has some sample acronyms with a custom acronym style. It also adds the glossary to the table of contents, so an extra run through LA TEX is required:
  latex sampleCustomAcr
  makeglossaries sampleCustomAcr
  latex sampleCustomAcr
  latex sampleCustomAcr

sampleFnAcrDesc.tex
  This is similar to sampleAcrDesc.tex, except that it uses the footnote-sc-desc style. As with the previous example, the glossary is added to the table of contents, so an extra run through LA TEX is required:
  latex sampleFnAcrDesc
  makeglossaries sampleFnAcrDesc
  latex sampleFnAcrDesc
  latex sampleFnAcrDesc

sample-FnDesc.tex
  This example defines a custom display format that puts the description in a footnote on first use.
  latex sample-FnDesc
  makeglossaries sample-FnDesc
  latex sample-FnDesc

sample-custom-acronym.tex
  This document illustrates how to define your own acronym style if the predefined styles don’t suit your requirements.
  latex sample-custom-acronym
  makeglossaries sample-custom-acronym
  latex sample-custom-acronym

sample-crossref.tex
  This document illustrates how to cross-reference entries in the glossary.
  latex sample-crossref
  makeglossaries sample-crossref
  latex sample-crossref

sampleDB.tex
  This document illustrates how to load external files containing the glossary definitions. It also illustrates how to define a new glossary type. This document has the number list suppressed and uses \glsaddall to add all the entries to the glossaries without referencing each one explicitly. To create the document do:
  latex sampleDB
  makeglossaries sampleDB
  latex sampleDB

  The glossary definitions are stored in the accompanying files database1.tex and database2.tex. Note that if you don’t have Perl installed, you will need to use makeindex twice instead of a single call to makeglossaries:

  1. Create the main glossary (all on one line):
     makeindex -s sampleDB.ist -t sampleDB.glg -o sampleDB.gls sampleDB.glo

  2. Create the secondary glossary (all on one line):
     makeindex -s sampleDB.ist -t sampleDB.nlg -o sampleDB.not sampleDB.ntn

sampleEq.tex
  This document illustrates how to change the location to something other than the page number. In this case, the equation counter is used since all glossary entries appear inside an equation environment. To create the document do:
  latex sampleEq
  makeglossaries sampleEq
  latex sampleEq

sampleEqPg.tex
  This is similar to the previous example, but the number lists are a mixture of page numbers and equation numbers. This example adds the glossary to the table of contents, so an extra LA TEX run is required:
  latex sampleEqPg
  makeglossaries sampleEqPg
  latex sampleEqPg
  latex sampleEqPg

sampleSec.tex
  This document also illustrates how to change the location to something other than the page number. In this case, the section counter is used. This example adds the glossary to the table of contents, so an extra LA TEX run is required:
  latex sampleSec
  makeglossaries sampleSec
  latex sampleSec
  latex sampleSec

sampleNtn.tex
  This document illustrates how to create an additional glossary type. This example adds the glossary to the table of contents, so an extra LA TEX run is required:
  latex sampleNtn
  makeglossaries sampleNtn
  latex sampleNtn
  latex sampleNtn

  Note that if you don’t have Perl installed, you will need to use makeindex twice instead of a single call to makeglossaries:

  1. Create the main glossary (all on one line):
     makeindex -s sampleNtn.ist -t sampleNtn.glg -o sampleNtn.gls sampleNtn.glo

  2. Create the secondary glossary (all on one line):
     makeindex -s sampleNtn.ist -t sampleNtn.nlg -o sampleNtn.not sampleNtn.ntn

sample.tex
  This document illustrates some of the basics, including how to create child entries that use the same name as the parent entry. This example adds the glossary to the table of contents and it also uses \glsrefentry, so an extra LA TEX run is required:
  latex sample
  makeglossaries sample
  latex sample
  latex sample

  You can see the difference between word and letter ordering if you substitute order=word with order=letter. (Note that this will only have an effect if you use makeglossaries. If you use makeindex explicitly, you will need to use the -l switch to indicate letter ordering.)

sample-inline.tex
  This document is like sample.tex, above, but uses the inline glossary style to put the glossary in a footnote.
sampletree.tex
  This document illustrates a hierarchical glossary structure where child entries have different names to their corresponding parent entry. To create the document do:
  latex sampletree
  makeglossaries sampletree
  latex sampletree

sample-dual.tex
  This document illustrates how to define an entry that both appears in the list of acronyms and in the main glossary. To create the document do:
  latex sample-dual
  makeglossaries sample-dual
  latex sample-dual

sample-langdict.tex
  This document illustrates how to use the glossaries package to create English to French and French to English dictionaries. To create the document do:
  latex sample-langdict
  makeglossaries sample-langdict
  latex sample-langdict

samplexdy.tex
  This document illustrates how to use the glossaries package with xindy instead of makeindex. The document uses UTF8 encoding (with the inputenc package). The encoding is picked up by makeglossaries. By default, this document will create a xindy style file called samplexdy.xdy, but if you uncomment the lines
  \setStyleFile{samplexdy-mc}
  \noist
  \GlsSetXdyLanguage{}

  it will set the style file to samplexdy-mc.xdy instead. This provides an additional letter group for entries starting with “Mc” or “Mac”. If you use makeglossaries, you don’t need to supply any additional information. If you don’t use makeglossaries, you will need to specify the required information. Note that if you set the style file to samplexdy-mc.xdy you must also specify \noist, otherwise the glossaries package will overwrite samplexdy-mc.xdy and you will lose the “Mc” letter group.

  To create the document do:
  latex samplexdy
  makeglossaries samplexdy
  latex samplexdy

  If you don’t have Perl installed, you will have to call xindy explicitly instead of using makeglossaries. If you are using the default style file samplexdy.xdy, then do (no line breaks):
  xindy -L english -C utf8 -I xindy -M samplexdy -t samplexdy.glg -o samplexdy.gls samplexdy.glo

  otherwise, if you are using samplexdy-mc.xdy, then do (no line breaks):
  xindy -I xindy -M samplexdy-mc -t samplexdy.glg -o samplexdy.gls samplexdy.glo

samplexdy2.tex
  This document illustrates how to use the glossaries package where the location numbers don’t follow a standard format. This example will only work with xindy. To create the document do:
  pdflatex samplexdy2
  makeglossaries samplexdy2
  pdflatex samplexdy2

  If you can’t use makeglossaries then you need to do (all on one line):
  xindy -L english -C utf8 -I xindy -M samplexdy2 -t samplexdy2.glg -o samplexdy2.gls samplexdy2.glo

  See §11.2 Locations and Number lists for further details.

sampleutf8.tex
  This is another example that uses xindy. Unlike makeindex, xindy can cope with non-Latin characters. This document uses UTF8 encoding. To create the document do:
  latex sampleutf8
  makeglossaries sampleutf8
  latex sampleutf8

  If you don’t have Perl installed, you will have to call xindy explicitly instead of using makeglossaries (no line breaks):
  xindy -L english -C utf8 -I xindy -M sampleutf8 -t sampleutf8.glg -o sampleutf8.gls sampleutf8.glo

  If you remove the xindy option from sampleutf8.tex and do:
  latex sampleutf8
  makeglossaries sampleutf8
  latex sampleutf8

  you will see that the entries that start with an extended Latin character now appear in the symbols group, and the word “manœuvre” is now after “manor” instead of before it. If you are unable to use makeglossaries, the call to makeindex is as follows (no line breaks):
  makeindex -s sampleutf8.ist -t sampleutf8.glg -o sampleutf8.gls sampleutf8.glo

sample-index.tex
  This document uses the glossaries package to create both a glossary and an index. This requires two makeglossaries calls to ensure the document is up to date:
  latex sample-index
  makeglossaries sample-index
  latex sample-index
  makeglossaries sample-index
  latex sample-index

sample-newkeys.tex
  This document illustrates how add custom keys.
sample-numberlist.tex
  This document illustrates how to reference the number list in the document text. This requires an additional LA TEX run:
  latex sample-numberlist
  makeglossaries sample-numberlist
  latex sample-numberlist
  latex sample-numberlist

samplePeople.tex
  This document illustrates how you can hook into the standard sort mechanism to adjust the way the sort key is set. This requires an additional run to ensure the table of contents is up-to-date:
  latex samplePeople
  makeglossaries samplePeople
  latex samplePeople
  latex samplePeople

sampleSort.tex
  This is another document that illustrates how to hook into the standard sort mechanism. An additional run is required to ensure the table of contents is up-to-date:
  latex sampleSort
  makeglossaries sampleSort
  latex sampleSort
  latex sampleSort

sample-nomathhyper.tex
  This document illustrates how to selectively enable and disable entry hyperlinks in \glsentryfmt.
sample-entryfmt.tex
  This document illustrates how to change the way an entry is displayed in the text.
sample-prefix.tex
  This document illustrates the use of the glossaries-prefix package. An additional run is required to ensure the table of contents is up-to-date:
  latex sample-prefix
  makeglossaries sample-prefix
  latex sample-prefix
  latex sample-prefix

sampleaccsupp.tex
  This document uses the experimental glossaries-accsupp package. The symbol is set to the replacement text. Note that some PDF viewers don’t use the accessibility support. Information about the glossaries-accsupp package can be found in §18 Accessibility Support.
sample-ignored.tex
  This document defines an ignored glossary for common terms that don’t need a definition.
sample-entrycount.tex
  This document uses \glsenableentrycount and \cgls (described in §14.1 Counting the Number of Times an Entry has been Used (First Use Flag Unset)) so that acronyms only used once don’t appear in the list of acronyms.

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###

### 1.2 Dummy Entries for Testing

In addition to the sample files described above, glossaries also provides some files containing lorum ipsum dummy entries. These are provided for testing purposes and are on TEX’s path (in tex/latex/glossaries/test-entries) so they can be included via \input or \loadglsentries. The files are as follows:

example-glossaries-brief.tex
  These entries all have brief descriptions.
example-glossaries-long.tex
  These entries all have long descriptions.
example-glossaries-multipar.tex
  These entries all have multi-paragraph descriptions.
example-glossaries-symbols.tex
  These entries all use the symbol key.
example-glossaries-images.tex
  These entries use the user1 key to store the name of an image file. (The images are provided by the mwe package and should be on TEX’s path.) One entry doesn’t have an associated image to help test for a missing key.
example-glossaries-acronym.tex
  These entries are all acronyms.
example-glossaries-acronym-desc.tex
  These entries are all acronyms that use the description key.
example-glossaries-acronyms-lang.tex
  These entries are all acronyms, where some of them have a translation supplied in the user1 key.
example-glossaries-parent.tex
  These are hierarchical entries where the child entries use the name key.
example-glossaries-childnoname.tex
  These are hierarchical entries where the child entries don’t use the name key.
example-glossaries-cite.tex
  These entries use the user1 key to store a citation key (or comma-separated list of citation keys). The citations are defined in xampl.bib, which should be available on all modern TEX distributions. One entry doesn’t have an associated citation to help test for a missing key.
example-glossaries-url.tex
  These entries use the user1 key to store an URL associated with the entry.

The sample file glossary-lipsum-examples.tex in the doc/latex/glossaries/samples directory uses all these files. See also http://www.dickimaw-books.com/gallery/#glossaries.

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###

### 1.3 Multi-Lingual Support

As from version 1.17, the glossaries package can now be used with xindy as well as makeindex. If you are writing in a language that uses an extended Latin alphabet or non-Latin alphabet it is recommended that you use xindy as makeindex is hard-coded for the non-extended Latin alphabet. This means that you are not restricted to the A, …, Z letter groups. If you want to use xindy, remember to use the xindy package option. For example:

\documentclass[frenchb]{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{babel}
\usepackage[xindy]{glossaries}

Note that although a non-Latin character, such as é, looks like a plain character in your tex file, with standard LA TEX it’s actually a macro and can therefore cause expansion problems. You may need to switch off the field expansions with \glsnoexpandfields. This issue doesn’t occur with XeLaTeX.

If you use a non-Latin character (or other expandable) character at the start of an entry name, you must place it in a group, or it will cause a problem for commands that convert the first letter to upper case (e.g. \Gls). For example:

\newglossaryentry}{elite}{name={{é}lite},
description={select group or class}}

(For further details, see the section “UTF-8” in the mfirstuc user manual.)

If you use the inputenc package, makeglossaries will pick up the encoding from the auxiliary file. If you use xindy explicitly instead of via makeglossaries, you may need to specify the encoding using the -C option. Read the xindy manual for further details.

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####

#### 1.3.1 Changing the Fixed Names

The fixed names are produced using the commands listed in table 1.2. If you aren’t using a language package such as babel or polyglossia that uses caption hooks, you can just redefine these commands as appropriate. If you are using babel or polyglossia, you need to use their caption hooks to change the defaults. See changing the words babel uses or read the babel or polyglossia documentation. If you have loaded babel, then glossaries will attempt to load translator, unless you have used the notranslate, translate=false or translate=babel package options. If the translator package is loaded, the translations are provided by dictionary files (for example, glossaries-dictionary-English.dict). See the translator package for advice on changing translations provided by translator dictionaries. If you can’t work out how to modify these dictionary definitions, try switching to babel’s interface using translate=babel:

\documentclass[english,french]{article}
\usepackage{babel}
\usepackage[translate=babel]{glossaries}

and then use babel’s caption hook mechanism. Note that if you pass the language options directly to babel rather that using the document class options or otherwise passing the same options to translator, then translator won’t pick up the language and no dictionaries will be loaded and babel’s caption hooks will be used instead.

Table 1.2: Customised Text

Command Name | Translator Key Word | Purpose
\glossaryname | Glossary | Title of the main glossary.
\acronymname | Acronyms | Title of the list of acronyms (when used with package option acronym).
\entryname | Notation (glossaries) | Header for first column in the glossary (for 2, 3 or 4 column glossaries that support headers).
\descriptionname | Description (glossaries) | Header for second column in the glossary (for 2, 3 or 4 column glossaries that support headers).
\symbolname | Symbol (glossaries) | Header for symbol column in the glossary for glossary styles that support this option.
\pagelistname | Page List (glossaries) | Header for page list column in the glossary for glossaries that support this option.
\glssymbolsgroupname | Symbols (glossaries) | Header for symbols section of the glossary for glossary styles that support this option.
\glsnumbersgroupname | Numbers (glossaries) | Header for numbers section of the glossary for glossary styles that support this option.

As from version 4.12, multilingual support is provided by separate language modules that need to be installed in addition to installing the glossaries package. You only need to install the modules for the languages that you require. If the language module has an unmaintained status, you can volunteer to take over the maintenance by contacting me at http://www.dickimaw-books.com/contact.html. The translator dictionary files for glossaries are now provided by the appropriate language module. For further details about information specific to a given language, please see the documentation for that language module.

Examples of use:

- Using babel and translator:
  \documentclass[english,french]{article}
  \usepackage{babel}
  \usepackage{glossaries}

  (translator is automatically loaded).

- Using babel:
  \documentclass[english,french]{article}
  \usepackage{babel}
  \usepackage[translate=babel]{glossaries}

  (translator isn’t loaded).

- Using polyglossia:
  \documentclass{article}
  \usepackage{polyglossia}
  \setmainlanguage{english}
  \usepackage{glossaries}

- Using ngerman:
  \documentclass{article}
  \usepackage{ngerman}
  \usepackage{glossaries}

Due to the varied nature of glossaries, it’s likely that the predefined translations may not be appropriate. If you are using the babel package and the glossaries package option translate=babel, you need to be familiar with the advice given in changing the words babel uses. If you are using the translator package, then you can provide your own dictionary with the necessary modifications (using \deftranslation) and load it using \usedictionary.

Note that the translator dictionaries are loaded at the beginning of the document, so it won’t have any effect if you put \deftranslation in the preamble. It should be put in your personal dictionary instead (as in the example below). See the translator documentation for further details. (Now with beamer documentation.)

Your custom dictionary doesn’t have to be just a translation from English to another language. You may prefer to have a dictionary for a particular type of document. For example, suppose your institution’s in-house reports have to have the glossary labelled as “Nomenclature” and the page list should be labelled “Location”, then you can create a file called, say,

myinstitute-glossaries-dictionary-English.dict

that contains the following:

\ProvidesDictionary{myinstitute-glossaries-dictionary}{English}
\deftranslation{Glossary}{Nomenclature}
\deftranslation{Page List (glossaries)}{Location}

You can now load it using:

\usedictionary{myinstitute-glossaries-dictionary}

(Make sure that myinstitute-glossaries-dictionary-English.dict can be found by TEX.) If you want to share your custom dictionary, you can upload it to CTAN.

If you are using babel and don’t want to use the translator interface, you can use the package option translate=babel. For example:

\documentclass[british]{article}
\usepackage{babel}
\usepackage[translate=babel]{glossaries}
\addto\captionsbritish{%
\renewcommand*{\glossaryname}{List of Terms}%
\renewcommand*{\acronymname}{List of Acronyms}%
}

Note that xindy provides much better multi-lingual support than makeindex, so I recommend that you use xindy if you have glossary entries that contain non-Latin characters. See §11 Xindy (Option 3) for further details.

##### Creating a New Language Module

The glossaries package now uses the tracklang package to determine which language modules need to be loaded. If you want to create a new language module, you should first read the tracklang documentation.

To create a new language module, you need to at least create two files: glossaries-⟨lang⟩.ldf and glossaries-dictionary-⟨Lang⟩.dict where ⟨lang⟩ is the root language name (for example, english) and ⟨Lang⟩ is the language name used by translator (for example, English).

Here’s an example of glossaries-dictionary-English.dict:

\ProvidesDictionary{glossaries-dictionary}{English}
\providetranslation{Glossary}{Glossary}
\providetranslation{Acronyms}{Acronyms}
\providetranslation{Notation (glossaries)}{Notation}
\providetranslation{Description (glossaries)}{Description}
\providetranslation{Symbol (glossaries)}{Symbol}
\providetranslation{Page List (glossaries)}{Page List}
\providetranslation{Symbols (glossaries)}{Symbols}
\providetranslation{Numbers (glossaries)}{Numbers}

You can use this as a template for your dictionary file. Change English to the translator name for your language (so that it matches the file name glossaries-dictionary-⟨Lang⟩.dict) and, for each \providetranslation, change the second argument to the appropriate translation.

Here’s an example of glossaries-english.ldf:

\ProvidesGlossariesLang{english}
\glsifusedtranslatordict{English}
{%
\addglossarytocaptions{\CurrentTrackedLanguage}%
\addglossarytocaptions{\CurrentTrackedDialect}%
}
{%
\@ifpackageloaded{polyglossia}%
{%
\newcommand*{\glossariescaptionsenglish}{%
\renewcommand*{\glossaryname}{\textenglish{Glossary}}%
\renewcommand*{\acronymname}{\textenglish{Acronyms}}%
\renewcommand*{\entryname}{\textenglish{Notation}}%
\renewcommand*{\descriptionname}{\textenglish{Description}}%
\renewcommand*{\symbolname}{\textenglish{Symbol}}%
\renewcommand*{\pagelistname}{\textenglish{Page List}}%
\renewcommand*{\glssymbolsgroupname}{\textenglish{Symbols}}%
\renewcommand*{\glsnumbersgroupname}{\textenglish{Numbers}}%
}%
}%
{%
\newcommand*{\glossariescaptionsenglish}{%
\renewcommand*{\glossaryname}{Glossary}%
\renewcommand*{\acronymname}{Acronyms}%
\renewcommand*{\entryname}{Notation}%
\renewcommand*{\descriptionname}{Description}%
\renewcommand*{\symbolname}{Symbol}%
\renewcommand*{\pagelistname}{Page List}%
\renewcommand*{\glssymbolsgroupname}{Symbols}%
\renewcommand*{\glsnumbersgroupname}{Numbers}%
}%
}%
\ifcsdef{captions\CurrentTrackedDialect}
{%
\csappto{captions\CurrentTrackedDialect}%
{%
\glossariescaptionsenglish
}%
}%
{%
\ifcsdef{captions\CurrentTrackedLanguage}
{
\csappto{captions\CurrentTrackedLanguage}%
{%
\glossariescaptionsenglish
}%
}%
{%
}%
}%
\glossariescaptionsenglish
}
\renewcommand*{\glspluralsuffix}{s}
\renewcommand*{\glsacrpluralsuffix}{\glspluralsuffix}
\renewcommand*{\glsupacrpluralsuffix}{\glstextup{\glspluralsuffix}}

This is a somewhat longer file, but again you can use it as a template. Replace English with the translator language label ⟨Lang⟩ used for the dictionary file and replace english with the root language name ⟨lang⟩. Within the definition of \glossariescaptions⟨lang⟩, replace the English text (such as “Glossaries”) with the appropriate translation.

Note: the suffixes used to generate the plural forms when the plural hasn’t been specified are given by \glspluralsuffix (for general entries) and \glsupacrpluralsuffix for acronyms where the suffix needs to be set using \glstextup to counteract the effects of \textsc and \glsacrpluralsuffix for other acronym styles. These commands need to be set before the entry is defined and so the definitions aren’t included in the caption mechanism as that’s not switched on until the start of the document. This means that the suffix in effect will be for the last loaded language.

If you want to add a regional variation, create a file called glossaries-⟨iso lang⟩-⟨iso country⟩.ldf, where ⟨iso lang⟩ is the ISO language code and ⟨iso country⟩ is the ISO country code. For example, glossaries-en-GB.ldf. This file can load the root language file and make the appropriate changes, for example:

\ProvidesGlossariesLang{en-GB}
\RequireGlossariesLang{english}
\glsifusedtranslatordict{British}
{%
\addglossarytocaptions{\CurrentTrackedLanguage}%
\addglossarytocaptions{\CurrentTrackedDialect}%
}
{%
\@ifpackageloaded{polyglossia}%
{%
% Modify \glossariescaptionsenglish as appropriate for
% polyglossia
}%
{%
% Modify \glossariescaptionsenglish as appropriate for
% non-polyglossia
}%
}

If the translations includes non-Latin characters, it’s necessary to provide code that’s independent of the input encoding. Remember that while some users may use UTF-8, others may use Latin-1 or any other supported encoding, but while users won’t appreciate you enforcing your preference on them, it’s useful to provide a UTF-8 version for XeLaTeX users.

The glossaries-irish.ldf file provides this as follows:

\ProvidesGlossariesLang{irish}
\glsifusedtranslatordict{Irish}
{%
\addglossarytocaptions{\CurrentTrackedLanguage}%
\addglossarytocaptions{\CurrentTrackedDialect}%
}
{%
\ifdefstring{\inputencodingname}{utf8}
{\input{glossaries-irish-utf8.ldf}}%
{%
\ifdef{\XeTeXinputencoding}% XeTeX defaults to UTF-8
{\input{glossaries-irish-utf8.ldf}}%
{\input{glossaries-irish-noenc.ldf}}
}
\ifcsdef{captions\CurrentTrackedDialect}
{%
\csappto{captions\CurrentTrackedDialect}%
{%
\glossariescaptionsirish
}%
}%
{%
\ifcsdef{captions\CurrentTrackedLanguage}
{
\csappto{captions\CurrentTrackedLanguage}%
{%
\glossariescaptionsirish
}%
}%
{%
}%
}%
\glossariescaptionsirish
}

(Again you can use this as a template. Replace irish with your root language label and Irish with the translator dictionary label.)

There are now two extra files: glossaries-irish-noenc.ldf and glossaries-irish-utf8.ldf.

These both define \glossariescaptionsirish but the *-noenc.ldf uses LA TEX accent commands:

\@ifpackageloaded{polyglossia}%
{%
\newcommand*{\glossariescaptionsirish}{%
\renewcommand*{\glossaryname}{\textirish{Gluais}}%
\renewcommand*{\acronymname}{\textirish{Acrainmneacha}}%
\renewcommand*{\entryname}{\textirish{Ciall}}%
\renewcommand*{\descriptionname}{\textirish{Tuairisc}}%
\renewcommand*{\symbolname}{\textirish{Comhartha}}%
\renewcommand*{\glssymbolsgroupname}{\textirish{Comhartha\’{\i}}}%
\renewcommand*{\pagelistname}{\textirish{Leathanaigh}}%
\renewcommand*{\glsnumbersgroupname}{\textirish{Uimhreacha}}%
}%
}%
{%
\newcommand*{\glossariescaptionsirish}{%
\renewcommand*{\glossaryname}{Gluais}%
\renewcommand*{\acronymname}{Acrainmneacha}%
\renewcommand*{\entryname}{Ciall}%
\renewcommand*{\descriptionname}{Tuairisc}%
\renewcommand*{\symbolname}{Comhartha}%
\renewcommand*{\glssymbolsgroupname}{Comhartha\’{\i}}%
\renewcommand*{\pagelistname}{Leathanaigh}%
\renewcommand*{\glsnumbersgroupname}{Uimhreacha}%
}%
}

whereas the *-utf8.ldf replaces the accent commands with the appropriate UTF-8 characters.

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###

### 1.4 Generating the Associated Glossary Files

This section is only applicable if you have chosen Options 2 or 3. You can ignore this section if you have chosen Option 1.

If this section seriously confuses you, and you can’t work out how to run makeglossaries or makeindex, you can try using the automake package option, described in §2.4 Sorting Options.

In order to generate a sorted glossary with compact number lists, it is necessary to use an external indexing application as an intermediate step (unless you have chosen Option 1). It is this application that creates the file containing the code that typesets the glossary. If this step is omitted, the glossaries will not appear in your document. The two indexing applications that are most commonly used with LA TEX are makeindex and xindy. As from version 1.17, the glossaries package can be used with either of these applications. Previous versions were designed to be used with makeindex only. Note that xindy has much better multi-lingual support than makeindex, so xindy is recommended if you’re not writing in English. Commands that only have an effect when xindy is used are described in §11 Xindy (Option 3).

This is a multi-stage process, but there are methods of automating document compilation using applications such as latexmk and arara. See http://www.dickimaw-books.com/latex/thesis/html/build.html for more information.

The glossaries package comes with the Perl script makeglossaries which will run makeindex or xindy on all the glossary files using a customized style file (which is created by \makeglossaries). See §1.4.1 Using the makeglossaries Perl Script for further details. Perl is stable, cross-platform, open source software that is used by a number of TEX-related applications. Most Unix-like operating systems come with a Perl interpreter. TEX Live also comes with a Perl interpreter. MiKTEX doesn’t come with a Perl interpreter so if you are a Windows MiKTEX user you will need to install Perl if you want to use makeglossaries. Further information is available at http://www.perl.org/about.html and MiKTeX and Perl scripts (and one Python script).

The advantages of using makeglossaries:

- It automatically detects whether to use makeindex or xindy and sets the relevant application switches.
- One call of makeglossaries will run makeindex/xindy for each glossary type.
- If things go wrong, makeglossaries will scan the messages from makeindex or xindy and attempt to diagnose the problem in relation to the glossaries package. This will hopefully provide more helpful messages in some cases. If it can’t diagnose the problem, you will have to read the relevant transcript file and see if you can work it out from the makeindex or xindy messages.

There is also a Java GUI alternative called makeglossariesgui, distributed separately, that has diagnostic tools.

Whilst it is strongly recommended that you use the makeglossaries script or makeglossariesgui, it is possible to use the glossaries package without using either application. However, note that some commands and package options have no effect if you don’t use makeglossaries or makeglossariesgui. These are listed in table 1.3.

If you are choosing not to use makeglossaries because you don’t want to install Perl, you will only be able to use makeindex as xindy also requires Perl.

Note that if any of your entries use an entry that is not referenced outside the glossary, you will need to do an additional makeglossaries, makeindex or xindy run, as appropriate. For example, suppose you have defined the following entries:1.3

\newglossaryentry{citrusfruit}{name={citrus fruit},
description={fruit of any citrus tree. (See also
\gls{orange})}}
\newglossaryentry{orange}{name={orange},
description={an orange coloured fruit.}}

and suppose you have \gls{citrusfruit} in your document but don’t reference the orange entry, then the orange entry won’t appear in your glossary until you first create the glossary and then do another run of makeglossaries, makeindex or xindy. For example, if the document is called myDoc.tex, then you must do:
latex myDoc
makeglossaries myDoc
latex myDoc
makeglossaries myDoc
latex myDoc

Likewise, an additional makeglossaries and LA TEX run may be required if the document pages shift with re-runs. For example, if the page numbering is not reset after the table of contents, the insertion of the table of contents on the second LA TEX run may push glossary entries across page boundaries, which means that the number lists in the glossary may need updating.

The examples in this document assume that you are accessing makeglossaries, xindy or makeindex via a terminal. Windows users can use the MSDOS Prompt which is usually accessed via the Start->All Programs menu or Start->All Programs->Accessories menu.

Alternatively, your text editor may have the facility to create a function that will call the required application. The article “Glossaries, Nomenclature, List of Symbols and Acronyms” in the LA TEX Community’s Know How section describes how to do this for TeXnicCenter, and the thread “Executing Glossaries’ makeindex from a WinEdt macro” on the comp.text.tex newsgroup describes how to do it for WinEdt. Section 1.1 (Building Your Document) of “Using LA TEX to Write a PhD Thesis” describes how to do it for TeXWorks. For other editors see the editor’s user manual for further details.

If any problems occur, remember to check the transcript files (e.g. .glg or .alg) for messages.

Table 1.3: Commands and package options that have no effect when using xindy or makeindex explicitly

Command or Package Option | makeindex | xindy
order=letter | use -l | use -M ord/letorder
order=word | default | default
xindy={language=⟨lang⟩,codename=⟨code⟩} | N/A | use -L ⟨lang⟩ -C ⟨code⟩
\GlsSetXdyLanguage{⟨lang⟩} | N/A | use -L ⟨lang⟩
\GlsSetXdyCodePage{⟨code⟩} | N/A | use -C ⟨code⟩

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####

#### 1.4.1 Using the makeglossaries Perl Script

The makeglossaries script picks up the relevant information from the auxiliary (.aux) file and will either call xindy or makeindex, depending on the supplied information. Therefore, you only need to pass the document’s name without the extension to makeglossaries. For example, if your document is called myDoc.tex, type the following in your terminal:
latex myDoc
makeglossaries myDoc
latex myDoc

You may need to explicitly load makeglossaries into Perl:
perl makeglossaries myDoc

Windows users: TeX Live on Windows has its own internal Perl interpreter and provides makeglossaries.exe as a convenient wrapper for the makeglossaries Perl script. MiKTeX also provides a wrapper makeglossaries.exe but doesn’t provide a Perl interpreter, which is still required even if you run MiKTeX’s makeglossaries.exe, so with MiKTeX you’ll need to install Perl. There’s more information about this at http://tex.stackexchange.com/q/158796/19862 on the TeX.SX site. Alternatively, there is a batch file called makeglossaries.bat that should be located in the same folder as the makeglossaries Perl script. This just explicitly loads the script into Perl. If you’ve installed Perl but for some reason your operating system can’t find perl.exe, you can edit the makeglossaries.bat file to include the full path to perl.exe (but take care as this file will be overwritten next time you update the glossaries package). If you move the .bat file to a new location, you will also need to supply the full path to the makeglossaries Perl script. (Don’t also move the Perl script as well or you may miss out on updates to makeglossaries.)

The makeglossaries script attempts to fork the makeindex/xindy process using open() on the piped redirection 2>&1 | and parses the processor output to help diagnose problems. If this method fails makeglossaries will print an “Unable to fork” warning and will retry without redirection. If you run makeglossaries on an operating system that doesn’t support this form of redirection, then you can use the -Q switch to suppress this warning or you can use the -k switch to make makeglossaries automatically use the fallback method without attempting the redirection. Without this redirection, the -q (quiet) switch doesn’t work as well.

You can specify in which directory the .aux, .glo etc files are located using the -d switch. For example:
pdflatex -output-directory myTmpDir myDoc
makeglossaries -d myTmpDir myDoc

Note that makeglossaries assumes by default that makeindex/xindy is on your operating system’s path. If this isn’t the case, you can specify the full pathname using -m ⟨path/to/makeindex⟩ for makeindex or -x ⟨path/to/xindy⟩ for xindy.

The makeglossaries script contains POD (Plain Old Documentation). If you want, you can create a man page for makeglossaries using pod2man and move the resulting file onto the man path. Alternatively do makeglossaries --help for a list of all options or makeglossaries --version for the version number.

When upgrading the glossaries package, make sure you also upgrade your version of makeglossaries. The current version is 2.15.

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####

#### 1.4.2 Using xindy explicitly (Option 3)

Xindy comes with TEX Live, but not with MiKTEX. However MikTEX users can install it. See How to use Xindy with MikTeX on TEX on StackExchange.

If you want to use xindy to process the glossary files, you must make sure you have used the xindy package option:

\usepackage[xindy]{glossaries}

This is required regardless of whether you use xindy explicitly or whether it’s called implicitly via applications such as makeglossaries or makeglossariesgui. This causes the glossary entries to be written in raw xindy format, so you need to use -I xindy not -I tex.

To run xindy type the following in your terminal (all on one line):
xindy -L ⟨language⟩ -C ⟨encoding⟩ -I xindy -M ⟨style⟩ -t ⟨base⟩.glg -o ⟨base⟩.gls ⟨base⟩.glo

where ⟨language⟩ is the required language name, ⟨encoding⟩ is the encoding, ⟨base⟩ is the name of the document without the .tex extension and ⟨style⟩ is the name of the xindy style file without the .xdy extension. The default name for this style file is ⟨base⟩.xdy but can be changed via \setStyleFile{⟨style⟩}. You may need to specify the full path name depending on the current working directory. If any of the file names contain spaces, you must delimit them using double-quotes.

For example, if your document is called myDoc.tex and you are using UTF8 encoding in English, then type the following in your terminal:
xindy -L english -C utf8 -I xindy -M myDoc -t myDoc.glg -o myDoc.gls myDoc.glo

Note that this just creates the main glossary. You need to do the same for each of the other glossaries (including the list of acronyms if you have used the acronym package option), substituting .glg, .gls and .glo with the relevant extensions. For example, if you have used the acronym package option, then you would need to do:
xindy -L english -C utf8 -I xindy -M myDoc -t myDoc.alg -o myDoc.acr myDoc.acn

For additional glossaries, the extensions are those supplied when you created the glossary with \newglossary.

Note that if you use makeglossaries instead, you can replace all those calls to xindy with just one call to makeglossaries:
makeglossaries myDoc

Note also that some commands and package options have no effect if you use xindy explicitly instead of using makeglossaries. These are listed in table 1.3.

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####

#### 1.4.3 Using makeindex explicitly (Option 2)

If you want to use makeindex explicitly, you must make sure that you haven’t used the xindy package option or the glossary entries will be written in the wrong format. To run makeindex, type the following in your terminal:
makeindex -s ⟨style⟩.ist -t ⟨base⟩.glg -o ⟨base⟩.gls ⟨base⟩.glo

where ⟨base⟩ is the name of your document without the .tex extension and ⟨style⟩.ist is the name of the makeindex style file. By default, this is ⟨base⟩.ist, but may be changed via \setStyleFile{⟨style⟩}. Note that there are other options, such as -l (letter ordering). See the makeindex manual for further details.

For example, if your document is called myDoc.tex, then type the following at the terminal:
makeindex -s myDoc.ist -t myDoc.glg -o myDoc.gls myDoc.glo

Note that this only creates the main glossary. If you have additional glossaries (for example, if you have used the acronym package option) then you must call makeindex for each glossary, substituting .glg, .gls and .glo with the relevant extensions. For example, if you have used the acronym package option, then you need to type the following in your terminal:
makeindex -s myDoc.ist -t myDoc.alg -o myDoc.acr myDoc.acn

For additional glossaries, the extensions are those supplied when you created the glossary with \newglossary.

Note that if you use makeglossaries instead, you can replace all those calls to makeindex with just one call to makeglossaries:
makeglossaries myDoc

Note also that some commands and package options have no effect if you use makeindex explicitly instead of using makeglossaries. These are listed in table 1.3.

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####

#### 1.4.4 Note to Front-End and Script Developers

The information needed to determine whether to use xindy or makeindex and the information needed to call those applications is stored in the auxiliary file. This information can be gathered by a front-end, editor or script to make the glossaries where appropriate. This section describes how the information is stored in the auxiliary file.

The file extensions used by each defined glossary are given by

\@newglossary \@newglossary{⟨label⟩}{⟨log⟩}{⟨out-ext⟩}{⟨in-ext⟩}

where ⟨in-ext⟩ is the extension of the indexing application’s input file (the output file from the glossaries package’s point of view), ⟨out-ext⟩ is the extension of the indexing application’s output file (the input file from the glossaries package’s point of view) and ⟨log⟩ is the extension of the indexing application’s transcript file. The label for the glossary is also given for information purposes only, but is not required by the indexing applications. For example, the information for the default main glossary is written as:

\@newglossary{main}{glg}{gls}{glo}

The indexing application’s style file is specified by

\@istfilename \@istfilename{⟨filename⟩}

The file extension indicates whether to use makeindex (.ist) or xindy (.xdy). Note that the glossary information is formatted differently depending on which indexing application is supposed to be used, so it’s important to call the correct one.

Word or letter ordering is specified by:

\@glsorder \@glsorder{⟨order⟩}

where ⟨order⟩ can be either word or letter.

If xindy should be used, the language and code page for each glossary is specified by

\@xdylanguage \@gls@codepage \@xdylanguage{⟨label⟩}{⟨language⟩}
\@gls@codepage{⟨label⟩}{⟨code⟩}

where ⟨label⟩ identifies the glossary, ⟨language⟩ is the root language (e.g. english) and ⟨code⟩ is the encoding (e.g. utf8). These commands are omitted if makeindex should be used.

If Option 1 has been used, the .aux file will contain

\@gls@reference{⟨type⟩}{⟨label⟩}{⟨location⟩}

for every time an entry has been referenced.

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## 2. Package Options

This section describes the available glossaries package options. You may omit the =true for boolean options. (For example, acronym is equivalent to acronym=true).

Note that ⟨key⟩=⟨value⟩ package options can’t be passed via the document class options. (This includes options where the ⟨value⟩ part may be omitted, such as acronym.) This is a general limitation not restricted to the glossaries package. Options that aren’t ⟨key⟩=⟨value⟩ (such as makeindex) may be passed via the document class options.

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###

### 2.1 General Options

nowarn
  This suppresses all warnings generated by the glossaries package. Don’t use this option if you’re new to using glossaries as the warnings are designed to help detect common mistakes (such as forgetting to use \makeglossaries).
noredefwarn
  If you load glossaries with a class or another package that already defines glossary related commands, by default glossaries will warn you that it’s redefining those commands. If you are aware of the consequences of using glossaries with that class or package and you don’t want to be warned about it, use this option to suppress those warnings. Other warnings will still be issued unless you use the nowarn option described above.
nomain
  This suppresses the creation of the main glossary and associated .glo file, if unrequired. Note that if you use this option, you must create another glossary in which to put all your entries (either via the acronym (or acronyms) package option described in §2.5 Acronym Options or via the symbols, numbers or index options described in §2.6 Other Options or via \newglossary described in §12 Defining New Glossaries).

  If you don’t use the main glossary and you don’t use this option, makeglossaries will produce the following warning:
  Warning: File ’filename.glo’ is empty.
  Have you used any entries defined in glossary
  ’main’?
  Remember to use package option ’nomain’ if
  you don’t want to use the main glossary.
  If you did actually want to use the main glossary and you see this warning, check that you have referenced the entries in that glossary via commands such as \gls.

sanitizesort
  This is a boolean option that determines whether or not to sanitize the sort value when writing to the external glossary file. For example, suppose you define an entry as follows:
  \newglossaryentry{hash}{name={\#},sort={#},
  description={hash symbol}}

  The sort value (#) must be sanitized before writing it to the glossary file, otherwise LA TEX will try to interpret it as a parameter reference. If, on the other hand, you want the sort value expanded, you need to switch off the sanitization. For example, suppose you do:

  \newcommand{\mysortvalue}{AAA}
  \newglossaryentry{sample}{%
  name={sample},
  sort={\mysortvalue},
  description={an example}}

  and you actually want \mysortvalue expanded, so that the entry is sorted according to AAA, then use the package option sanitizesort=false.

  The default for Options 2 and 3 is sanitizesort=true, and the default for Option 1 is sanitizesort=false.

savewrites
  This is a boolean option to minimise the number of write registers used by the glossaries package. (Default is savewrites=false.) There are only a limited number of write registers, and if you have a large number of glossaries or if you are using a class or other packages that create a lot of external files, you may exceed the maximum number of available registers. If savewrites is set, the glossary information will be stored in token registers until the end of the document when they will be written to the external files. If you run out of token registers, you can use etex.

  This option can significantly slow document compilation. As an alternative, you can use the scrwfile package (part of the KOMA-Script bundle) and not use this option.

  You can also reduce the number of write registers by using Option 1 or by ensuring you define all your glossary entries in the preamble.

  If you want to use TEX’s \write18 mechanism to call makeindex or xindy from your document and use savewrites, you must create the external files with \glswritefiles before you call makeindex/xindy. Also set \glswritefiles to nothing or \relax before the end of the document to avoid rewriting the files. For example:
  \glswritefiles
  \write18{makeindex -s \istfilename\space
  -t \jobname.glg -o \jobname.gls \jobname}
  \let\glswritefiles\relax

translate
  This can take the following values:
  translate=true
    If babel has been loaded and the translator package is installed, translator will be loaded and the translations will be provided by the translator package interface. You can modify the translations by providing your own dictionary. If the translator package isn’t installed and babel is loaded, the glossaries-babel package will be loaded and the translations will be provided using babel’s \addto\caption⟨language⟩ mechanism. If polyglossia has been loaded, glossaries-polyglossia will be loaded.
  translate=false
    Don’t provide translations, even if babel or polyglossia has been loaded. (Note that babel provides the command \glossaryname so that will still be translated if you have loaded babel.)
  translate=babel
    Don’t load the translator package. Instead load glossaries-babel.

    I recommend you use translate=babel if you have any problems with the translations or with PDF bookmarks, but to maintain backward compatibility, if babel has been loaded the default is translate=true.

  If translate is specified without a value, translate=true is assumed. If translate isn’t specified, translate=true is assumed if babel, polyglossia or translator have been loaded. Otherwise translate=false is assumed.

  See §1.3.1 Changing the Fixed Names for further details.

notranslate
  This is equivalent to translate=false and may be passed via the document class options.
nohypertypes
  Use this option if you have multiple glossaries and you want to suppress the entry hyperlinks for a particular glossary or glossaries. The value of this option should be a comma-separated list of glossary types where \gls etc shouldn’t have hyperlinks by default. Make sure you enclose the value in braces if it contains any commas. Example:
  \usepackage[acronym,nohypertypes={acronym,notation}]
  {glossaries}
  \newglossary[nlg]{notation}{not}{ntn}{Notation}

  The values must be fully expanded, so don’t try nohypertypes=\acronymtype. You may also use

  \GlsDeclareNoHyperList{⟨list⟩}

  instead or additionally. See §6 Links to Glossary Entries for further details.

hyperfirst
  This is a boolean option that specifies whether each term has a hyperlink on first use. The default is hyperfirst=true (terms on first use have a hyperlink, unless explicitly suppressed using starred versions of commands such as \gls* or by identifying the glossary with nohypertypes, described above). Note that nohypertypes overrides hyperfirst=true. This option only affects commands that check the first use flag, such as the \gls-like commands (for example, \gls or \glsdisp), but not the \glstext-like commands (for example, \glslink or \glstext).

  The hyperfirst setting applies to all glossary types (unless identified by nohypertypes or defined with \newignoredglossary). It can be overridden on an individual basis by explicitly setting the hyper key when referencing an entry (or by using the plus or starred version of the referencing command).

  It may be that you only want to apply this to just the acronyms (where the first use explains the meaning of the acronym) but not for ordinary glossary entries (where the first use is identical to subsequent uses). In this case, you can use hyperfirst=false and apply \glsunsetall to all the regular (non-acronym) glossaries. For example:

  \usepackage[acronym,hyperfirst=false]{glossaries}
  % acronym and glossary entry definitions
  % at the end of the preamble
  \glsunsetall[main]

  Alternatively you can redefine the hook

  \glslinkcheckfirsthyperhook \glslinkcheckfirsthyperhook

  which is used by the commands that check the first use flag, such as \gls. Within the definition of this command, you can use \glslabel to reference the entry label and \glstype to reference the glossary type. You can also use \ifglsused to determine if the entry has been used. You can test if an entry is an acronym by checking if it has the long key set using \ifglshaslong. For example, to switch off the hyperlink on first use just for acronyms:

  \renewcommand*{\glslinkcheckfirsthyperhook}{%
  \ifglsused{\glslabel}{}%
  {%
  \ifglshaslong{\glslabel}{\setkeys{glslink}{hyper=false}}{}%
  }%
  }

  Note that this hook isn’t used by the commands that don’t check the first use flag, such as \glstext.

savenumberlist
  This is a boolean option that specifies whether or not to gather and store the number list for each entry. The default is savenumberlist=false. (See \glsentrynumberlist and \glsdisplaynumberlist in §9 Using Glossary Terms Without Links.) This is always true if you use Option 1.

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###

### 2.2 Sectioning, Headings and TOC Options

toc
  Add the glossaries to the table of contents. Note that an extra LA TEX run is required with this option. Alternatively, you can switch this function on and off using

  \glstoctrue \glstoctrue

  and

  \glstocfalse \glstocfalse

numberline
  When used with toc, this will add \numberline{} in the final argument of \addcontentsline. This will align the table of contents entry with the numbered section titles. Note that this option has no effect if the toc option is omitted. If toc is used without numberline, the title will be aligned with the section numbers rather than the section titles.
section
  This is a ⟨key⟩=⟨value⟩ option. Its value should be the name of a sectional unit (e.g. chapter). This will make the glossaries appear in the named sectional unit, otherwise each glossary will appear in a chapter, if chapters exist, otherwise in a section. Unnumbered sectional units will be used by default. Example:
  \usepackage[section=subsection]{glossaries}

  You can omit the value if you want to use sections, i.e.

  \usepackage[section]{glossaries}

  is equivalent to

  \usepackage[section=section]{glossaries}

  You can change this value later in the document using

  \setglossarysection \setglossarysection{⟨name⟩}

  where ⟨name⟩ is the sectional unit.

  The start of each glossary adds information to the page header via

  \glsglossarymark \glsglossarymark{⟨glossary title⟩}

  By default this uses \@mkboth 2.1 but you may need to redefine it. For example, to only change the right header:

  \renewcommand{\glsglossarymark}[1]{\markright{#1}}

  or to prevent it from changing the headers:

  \renewcommand{\glsglossarymark}[1]{}

  If you want \glsglossarymark to use \MakeUppercase in the header, use the ucmark option described below.

  Occasionally you may find that another package defines \cleardoublepage when it is not required. This may cause an unwanted blank page to appear before each glossary. This can be fixed by redefining \glsclearpage \glsclearpage:

  \renewcommand*{\glsclearpage}{\clearpage}

ucmark
  This is a boolean option (default: ucmark=false, unless memoir has been loaded, in which case it defaults to ucmark=true). If set, \glsglossarymark uses \MakeTextUppercase 2.2. You can test whether this option has been set or not using

  \ifglsucmark \ifglsucmark ⟨true part⟩\else ⟨false part⟩\fi

  For example:

  \renewcommand{\glsglossarymark}[1]{%
  \ifglsucmark
  \markright{\MakeTextUppercase{#1}}%
  \else
  \markright{#1}%
  \fi}

  If memoir has been loaded and ucfirst is set, then memoir’s \memUChead is used.

numberedsection
  The glossaries are placed in unnumbered sectional units by default, but this can be changed using numberedsection. This option can take one of the following values:
  - false: no number, i.e. use starred form of sectioning command (e.g. \chapter* or \section*);
  - nolabel: use a numbered section, i.e. the unstarred form of sectioning command (e.g. \chapter or \section), but the section not labelled;
  - autolabel: numbered with automatic labelling. Each glossary uses the unstarred form of a sectioning command (e.g. \chapter or \section) and is assigned a label (via \label). The label is formed from

    \glsautoprefix \glsautoprefix ⟨type⟩

    where ⟨type⟩ is the label identifying that glossary. The default value of \glsautoprefix is empty. For example, if you load glossaries using:

    \usepackage[section,numberedsection=autolabel]
    {glossaries}

    then each glossary will appear in a numbered section, and can be referenced using something like:

    The main glossary is in section~\ref{main} and
    the list of acronyms is in section~\ref{acronym}.

    If you can’t decide whether to have the acronyms in the main glossary or a separate list of acronyms, you can use \acronymtype which is set to main if the acronym option is not used and is set to acronym if the acronym option is used. For example:

    The list of acronyms is in section~\ref{\acronymtype}.

    You can redefine the prefix if the default label clashes with another label in your document. For example:

    \renewcommand*{\glsautoprefix}{glo:}

    will add glo: to the automatically generated label, so you can then, for example, refer to the list of acronyms as follows:

    The list of acronyms is in
    section~\ref{glo:\acronymtype}.

    Or, if you are undecided on a prefix:

    The list of acronyms is in
    section~\ref{\glsautoprefix\acronymtype}.

  - nameref: this is like autolabel but uses an unnumbered sectioning command (e.g. \chapter* or \section*). It’s designed for use with the nameref package. For example:
    \usepackage{nameref}
    \usepackage[numberedsection=nameref]{glossaries}

    Now \nameref{main} will display the (TOC) section title associated with the main glossary. As above, you can redefine \glsautoprefix to provide a prefix for the label.

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###

### 2.3 Glossary Appearance Options

entrycounter
  This is a boolean option. (Default is entrycounter=false.) If set, each main (level 0) glossary entry will be numbered when using the standard glossary styles. This option creates the counter glossaryentry glossaryentry.

  If you use this option, you can reference the entry number within the document using

  \glsrefentry \glsrefentry{⟨label⟩}

  where ⟨label⟩ is the label associated with that glossary entry.

  If you use \glsrefentry, you must run LA TEX twice after creating the glossary files using makeglossaries, makeindex or xindy to ensure the cross-references are up-to-date.

counterwithin
  This is a ⟨key⟩=⟨value⟩ option where ⟨value⟩ is the name of a counter. If used, this option will automatically set entrycounter=true and the glossaryentry counter will be reset every time ⟨value⟩ is incremented.

  The glossaryentry counter isn’t automatically reset at the start of each glossary, except when glossary section numbering is on and the counter used by counterwithin is the same as the counter used in the glossary’s sectioning command.

  If you want the counter reset at the start of each glossary, you can redefine \glossarypreamble to use

  \glsresetentrycounter \glsresetentrycounter

  which sets glossaryentry to zero:

  \renewcommand{\glossarypreamble}{%
  \glsresetentrycounter
  }

  or if you are using \setglossarypreamble, add it to each glossary preamble, as required. For example:

  \setglossarypreamble[acronym]{%
  \glsresetentrycounter
  The preamble text here for the list of acronyms.
  }
  \setglossarypreamble{%
  \glsresetentrycounter
  The preamble text here for the main glossary.
  }

subentrycounter
  This is a boolean option. (Default is subentrycounter=false.) If set, each level 1 glossary entry will be numbered when using the standard glossary styles. This option creates the counter glossarysubentry glossarysubentry. The counter is reset with each main (level 0) entry. Note that this package option is independent of entrycounter. You can reference the number within the document using \glsrefentry{⟨label⟩} where ⟨label⟩ is the label associated with the sub-entry.
style
  This is a ⟨key⟩=⟨value⟩ option. (Default is style=list.) Its value should be the name of the glossary style to use. This key may only be used for styles defined in glossary-list, glossary-long, glossary-super or glossary-tree. Alternatively, you can set the style using

  \setglossarystyle{⟨style name⟩}

  (See §15 Glossary Styles for further details.)

nolong
  This prevents the glossaries package from automatically loading glossary-long (which means that the longtable package also won’t be loaded). This reduces overhead by not defining unwanted styles and commands. Note that if you use this option, you won’t be able to use any of the glossary styles defined in the glossary-long package (unless you explicitly load glossary-long).
nosuper
  This prevents the glossaries package from automatically loading glossary-super (which means that the supertabular package also won’t be loaded). This reduces overhead by not defining unwanted styles and commands. Note that if you use this option, you won’t be able to use any of the glossary styles defined in the glossary-super package (unless you explicitly load glossary-super).
nolist
  This prevents the glossaries package from automatically loading glossary-list. This reduces overhead by not defining unwanted styles. Note that if you use this option, you won’t be able to use any of the glossary styles defined in the glossary-list package (unless you explicitly load glossary-list). Note that since the default style is list, you will also need to use the style option to set the style to something else.
notree
  This prevents the glossaries package from automatically loading glossary-tree. This reduces overhead by not defining unwanted styles. Note that if you use this option, you won’t be able to use any of the glossary styles defined in the glossary-tree package (unless you explicitly load glossary-tree).
nostyles
  This prevents all the predefined styles from being loaded. If you use this option, you need to load a glossary style package (such as glossary-mcols). Also if you use this option, you can’t use the style package option. Instead you must either use \setglossarystyle{⟨style⟩} or the style key in the optional argument to \printglossary. Example:
  \usepackage[nostyles]{glossaries}
  \usepackage{glossary-mcols}
  \setglossarystyle{mcoltree}

nonumberlist
  This option will suppress the associated number lists in the glossaries (see also §5 Number lists).
seeautonumberlist
  If you suppress the number lists with nonumberlist, described above, this will also suppress any cross-referencing information supplied by the see key in \newglossaryentry or \glssee. If you use seeautonumberlist, the see key will automatically implement nonumberlist=false for that entry. (Note this doesn’t affect \glssee.) For further details see §8 Cross-Referencing Entries.
counter
  This is a ⟨key⟩=⟨value⟩ option. (Default is counter=page.) The value should be the name of the default counter to use in the number lists (see §5 Number lists).
nopostdot
  This is a boolean option. If no value is specified, true is assumed. When set to true, this option suppresses the default post description dot used by some of the predefined styles. The default setting is nopostdot=false.
nogroupskip
  This is a boolean option. If no value is specified, true is assumed. When set to true, this option suppresses the default vertical gap between groups used by some of the predefined styles. The default setting is nogroupskip=false.

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###

### 2.4 Sorting Options

sort
  If you use Options 2 or 3, this package option is the only way of specifying how to sort the glossaries. Only Option 1 allows you to specify sort methods for individual glossaries via the sort key in the optional argument of \printnoidxglossary. If you have multiple glossaries in your document and you are using Option 1, only use the package options sort=def or sort=use if you want to set this sort method for all your glossaries.

  This is a ⟨key⟩=⟨value⟩ option where ⟨value⟩ may be one of the following:

  - standard : entries are sorted according to the value of the sort key used in \newglossaryentry (if present) or the name key (if sort key is missing);
  - def : entries are sorted in the order in which they were defined (the sort key in \newglossaryentry is ignored);
  - use : entries are sorted according to the order in which they are used in the document (the sort key in \newglossaryentry is ignored).

    Both sort=def and sort=use set the sort key to a six digit number via

    \glssortnumberfmt \glssortnumberfmt{⟨number⟩}

    (padded with leading zeros, where necessary). This can be redefined, if required, before the entries are defined (in the case of sort=def) or before the entries are used (in the case of sort=use).

  The default is sort=standard. When the standard sort option is in use, you can hook into the sort mechanism by redefining:

  \glsprestandardsort \glsprestandardsort{⟨sort cs⟩}{⟨type⟩}{⟨label⟩}

  where ⟨sort cs⟩ is a temporary control sequence that stores the sort value (which was either explicitly set via the sort key or implicitly set via the name key) before any escaping of the makeindex/xindy special characters is performed. By default \glsprestandardsort just does:

  \glsdosanitizesort \glsdosanitizesort

  which sanitizes ⟨sort cs⟩ if the sanitizesort package option is set (or does nothing if the package option sanitizesort=false is used).

  The other arguments, ⟨type⟩ and ⟨label⟩, are the glossary type and the entry label for the current entry. Note that ⟨type⟩ will always be a control sequence, but ⟨label⟩ will be in the form used in the first argument of \newglossaryentry.

  Redefining \glsprestandardsort won’t affect any entries that have already been defined and will have no effect at all if you are using sort=def or sort=use.

  Example 1 (Mixing Alphabetical and Order of Definition Sorting)

  Suppose I have three glossaries: main, acronym and notation, and let’s suppose I want the main and acronym glossaries to be sorted alphabetically, but the notation type should be sorted in order of definition.

  For Option 1, I just need to set the sort key in the optional argument of \printnoidxglossary:

  \printnoidxglossary[sort=word]
  \printnoidxglossary[type=acronym,sort=word]
  \printnoidxglossary[type=notation,sort=def]

  For Options 2 or 3, I can set the sort to standard (which is the default, but can be explicitly set via the package option sort=standard), and I can either define all my main and acronym entries, then redefine \glsprestandardsort to set ⟨sort cs⟩ to an incremented integer, and then define all my notation entries. Alternatively, I can redefine \glsprestandardsort to check for the glossary type and only modify ⟨sort cs⟩ if ⟨type⟩ is notation.

  The first option can be achieved as follows:

  \newcounter{sortcount}
  \renewcommand{\glsprestandardsort}[3]{%
  \stepcounter{sortcount}%
  \edef#1{\glssortnumberfmt{\arabic{sortcount}}}%
  }

  The second option can be achieved as follows:

  \newcounter{sortcount}
  \renewcommand{\glsprestandardsort}[3]{%
  \ifdefstring{#2}{notation}%
  {%
  \stepcounter{sortcount}%
  \edef#1{\glssortnumberfmt{\arabic{sortcount}}}%
  }%
  {%
  \glsdosanitizesort
  }%
  }

  (\ifdefstring is defined by the etoolbox package.) For a complete document, see the sample file sampleSort.tex.

  ____________________________

  Example 2 (Customizing Standard Sort (Options 2 or 3))

  Suppose you want a glossary of people and you want the names listed as ⟨first-name⟩ ⟨surname⟩ in the glossary, but you want the names sorted by ⟨surname⟩, ⟨first-name⟩. You can do this by defining a command called, say, \name{⟨first-name⟩}{⟨surname⟩} that you can use in the name key when you define the entry, but hook into the standard sort mechanism to temporarily redefine \name while the sort value is being set.

  First, define two commands to set the person’s name:

  \newcommand{\sortname}[2]{#2, #1}
  \newcommand{\textname}[2]{#1 #2}

  and \name needs to be initialised to \textname:

  \let\name\textname

  Now redefine \glsprestandardsort so that it temporarily sets \name to \sortname and expands the sort value, then sets \name to \textname so that the person’s name appears as ⟨first-name⟩ ⟨surname⟩ in the text:

  \renewcommand{\glsprestandardsort}[3]{%
  \let\name\sortname
  \edef#1{\expandafter\expandonce\expandafter{#1}}%
  \let\name\textname
  \glsdosanitizesort
  }

  (The somewhat complicate use of \expandafter etc helps to protect fragile commands, but care is still needed.)

  Now the entries can be defined:

  \newglossaryentry{joebloggs}{name={\name{Joe}{Bloggs}},
  description={some information about Joe Bloggs}}
  \newglossaryentry{johnsmith}{name={\name{John}{Smith}},
  description={some information about John Smith}}

  For a complete document, see the sample file samplePeople.tex.

  ____________________________

order
  This may take two values: word or letter. The default is word ordering.

  Note that the order option has no effect if you don’t use makeglossaries.

  If you use Option 1, this setting will be used if you use sort=standard in the optional argument of \printnoidxglossary:

  \printnoidxglossary[sort=standard]

  Alternatively, you can specify the order for individual glossaries:

  \printnoidxglossary[sort=word]
  \printnoidxglossary[type=acronym,sort=letter]

makeindex
  (Option 2) The glossary information and indexing style file will be written in makeindex format. If you use makeglossaries, it will automatically detect that it needs to call makeindex. If you don’t use makeglossaries, you need to remember to use makeindex not xindy. The indexing style file will been given a .ist extension.

  You may omit this package option if you are using Option 2 as this is the default. It’s available in case you need to override the effect of an earlier occurrence of xindy in the package option list.

xindy
  (Option 3) The glossary information and indexing style file will be written in xindy format. If you use makeglossaries, it will automatically detect that it needs to call xindy. If you don’t use makeglossaries, you need to remember to use xindy not makeindex. The indexing style file will been given a .xdy extension.

  This package option may additionally have a value that is a ⟨key⟩=⟨value⟩ comma-separated list to override the language and codepage. For example:

  \usepackage[xindy={language=english,codepage=utf8}]
  {glossaries}

  You can also specify whether you want a number group in the glossary. This defaults to true, but can be suppressed. For example:

  \usepackage[xindy={glsnumbers=false}]{glossaries}

  If no value is supplied to this package option (either simply writing xindy or writing xindy={}) then the language, codepage and number group settings are unchanged. See §11 Xindy (Option 3) for further details on using xindy with the glossaries package.

xindygloss
  (Option 3) This is equivalent to xindy={} (that is, the xindy option without any value supplied) and may be used as a document class option. The language and code page can be set via \GlsSetXdyLanguage and \GlsSetXdyCodePage (see §11.1 Language and Encodings.)
xindynoglsnumbers
  (Option 3) This is equivalent to xindy={glsnumbers=false} and may be used as a document class option.
automake
  This is a boolean option (new to version 4.08) that will attempt to run makeindex or xindy using TEX’s \write18 mechanism at the end of the document. Since this mechanism can be a security risk, some TEX distributions disable it completely, in which case this option won’t have an effect. (If this option doesn’t appear to work, search the log file for “runsystem” and see if it is followed by “enabled” or “disabled”.)

  Some distributions allow \write18 in a restricted mode. This mode has a limited number of trusted applications, which usually includes makeindex but may not include xindy. So if you have the restricted mode on, automake should work with makeindex but may not work with xindy.

  However even in unrestricted mode this option may not work with xindy as xindy uses language names that don’t always correspond with \babel’s language names. (The makeglossaries script applies mappings to assist you.) Note that you still need at least two LA TEX runs to ensure the document is up-to-date with this setting.

  Since this package option attempts to run the indexing application on every LA TEX run, its use should be considered a last resort for those who can’t work out how to incorporate the indexing application into their document build. The default value for this option is automake=false.

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###

### 2.5 Acronym Options

acronym
  This creates a new glossary with the label acronym. This is equivalent to:
  \newglossary[alg]{acronym}{acr}{acn}{\acronymname}

  It will also define

  \printacronyms \printacronyms[⟨options⟩]

  that’s equivalent to

  \printglossary[type=acronym,⟨options⟩]
  (unless that command is already defined before the beginning of the document or the package option compatible-3.07 is used).

  If you are using Option 1, you need to use

  \printnoidxglossary[type=acronym,⟨options⟩]
  to display the list of acronyms.

  If the acronym package option is used, \acronymtype is set to acronym otherwise it is set to main.2.3 Entries that are defined using \newacronym are placed in the glossary whose label is given by \acronymtype, unless another glossary is explicitly specified.

  Remember to use the nomain package option if you’re only interested in using this acronym glossary.

acronyms
  This is equivalent to acronym=true and may be used in the document class option list.
acronymlists
  By default, only the \acronymtype glossary is considered to be a list of acronyms. If you have other lists of acronyms, you can specify them as a comma-separated list in the value of acronymlists. For example, if you use the acronym package option but you also want the main glossary to also contain a list of acronyms, you can do:
  \usepackage[acronym,acronymlists={main}]{glossaries}

  No check is performed to determine if the listed glossaries exist, so you can add glossaries you haven’t defined yet. For example:

  \usepackage[acronym,acronymlists={main,acronym2}]
  {glossaries}
  \newglossary[alg2]{acronym2}{acr2}{acn2}%
  {Statistical Acronyms}

  You can use

  \DeclareAcronymList \DeclareAcronymList{⟨list⟩}

  instead of or in addition to the acronymlists option. This will add the glossaries given in ⟨list⟩ to the list of glossaries that are identified as lists of acronyms. To replace the list of acronym lists with a new list use:

  \SetAcronymLists \SetAcronymLists{⟨list⟩}

  You can determine if a glossary has been identified as being a list of acronyms using:

  \glsIfListOfAcronyms \glsIfListOfAcronyms{⟨label⟩}{⟨true part⟩}{⟨false part⟩}

shortcuts
  This option provides shortcut commands for acronyms. See §13 Acronyms for further details. Alternatively you can use:

  \DefineAcronymShortcuts \DefineAcronymShortcuts

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####

#### 2.5.1 Deprecated Acronym Style Options

The package options listed in this section are now deprecated but are kept for backward-compatibility. Use \setacronymstyle instead. See §13 Acronyms for further details.

description
  This option changes the definition of \newacronym to allow a description. This option may be replaced by
  \setacronymstyle{long-short-desc}

  or (with smallcaps)

  \setacronymstyle{long-sc-short-desc}

  or (with smaller)

  \setacronymstyle{long-sm-short-desc}

  or (with footnote)

  \setacronymstyle{footnote-desc}

  or (with footnote and smallcaps)

  \setacronymstyle{footnote-sc-desc}

  or (with footnote and smaller)

  \setacronymstyle{footnote-sm-desc}

  or (with dua)

  \setacronymstyle{dua-desc}

smallcaps
  This option changes the definition of \newacronym and the way that acronyms are displayed. This option may be replaced by:
  \setacronymstyle{long-sc-short}

  or (with description)

  \setacronymstyle{long-sc-short-desc}

  or (with description and footnote)

  \setacronymstyle{footnote-sc-desc}

smaller
  This option changes the definition of \newacronym and the way that acronyms are displayed.

  If you use this option, you will need to include the relsize package or otherwise define \textsmaller or redefine \acronymfont.

  This option may be replaced by:

  \setacronymstyle{long-sm-short}

  or (with description)

  \setacronymstyle{long-sm-short-desc}

  or (with description and footnote)

  \setacronymstyle{footnote-sm-desc}

footnote
  This option changes the definition of \newacronym and the way that acronyms are displayed. This option may be replaced by:
  \setacronymstyle{footnote}

  or (with smallcaps)

  \setacronymstyle{footnote-sc}

  or (with smaller)

  \setacronymstyle{footnote-sm}

  or (with description)

  \setacronymstyle{footnote-desc}

  or (with smallcaps and description)

  \setacronymstyle{footnote-sc-desc}

  or (with smaller and description)

  \setacronymstyle{footnote-sm-desc}

dua
  This option changes the definition of \newacronym so that acronyms are always expanded. This option may be replaced by:
  \setacronymstyle{dua}

  or (with description)

  \setacronymstyle{dua-desc}

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###

### 2.6 Other Options

Other available options that don’t fit any of the above categories are:

symbols
  This option defines a new glossary type with the label symbols via
  \newglossary[slg]{symbols}{sls}{slo}{\glssymbolsgroupname}

  It also defines

  \printsymbols \printsymbols[⟨options⟩]

  which is a synonym for

  \printglossary[type=symbols,⟨options⟩]

  If you use Option 1, you need to use:

  \printnoidxglossary[type=symbols,⟨options⟩]
  to display the list of symbols.

  Remember to use the nomain package option if you’re only interested in using this symbols glossary.

numbers
  This option defines a new glossary type with the label numbers via
  \newglossary[nlg]{numbers}{nls}{nlo}{\glsnumbersgroupname}

  It also defines

  \printnumbers \printnumbers[⟨options⟩]

  which is a synonym for

  \printglossary[type=numbers,⟨options⟩]

  If you use Option 1, you need to use:

  \printnoidxglossary[type=numbers,⟨options⟩]
  to display the list of numbers.

  Remember to use the nomain package option if you’re only interested in using this numbers glossary.

index
  This option defines a new glossary type with the label index via
  \newglossary[ilg]{index}{ind}{idx}{\indexname}%

  It also defines

  \newterm \newterm[⟨options⟩]{⟨term⟩}

  which is a synonym for

  \newglossaryentry{⟨term⟩}[type=index,name={⟨term⟩},%
  description=\nopostdesc,⟨options⟩]
  and

  \printindex \printindex[⟨options⟩]

  which is a synonym for

  \printglossary[type=index,⟨options⟩]

  If you use Option 1, you need to use:

  \printnoidxglossary[type=index,⟨options⟩]
  to display this glossary.

  Remember to use the nomain package option if you’re only interested in using this index glossary. Note that you can’t mix this option with \index. Either use glossaries for the indexing or use a custom indexing package, such as makeidx, index or imakeidx. (You can, of course, load one of those packages and load glossaries without the index package option.)

  Since the index isn’t designed for terms with descriptions, you might also want to disable the hyperlinks for this glossary using the package option nohypertypes=index or the command
  \GlsDeclareNoHyperList{index}

  The example file sample-index.tex illustrates the use of the index package option.

compatible-2.07
  Compatibility mode for old documents created using version 2.07 or below.
compatible-3.07
  Compatibility mode for old documents created using version 3.07 or below.

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###

### 2.7 Setting Options After the Package is Loaded

Some of the options described above may also be set after the glossaries package has been loaded using

\setupglossaries \setupglossaries{⟨key-val list⟩}

The following package options can’t be used in \setupglossaries: xindy, xindygloss, xindynoglsnumbers, makeindex, nolong, nosuper, nolist, notree, nostyles, nomain, compatible-2.07, translate, notranslate, acronym. These options have to be set while the package is loading, except for the xindy sub-options which can be set using commands like \GlsSetXdyLanguage (see §11 Xindy (Option 3) for further details).

If you need to use this command, use it as soon as possible after loading glossaries otherwise you might end up using it too late for the change to take effect. For example, if you try changing the acronym styles (such as smallcaps) after you have started defining your acronyms, you are likely to get unexpected results. If you try changing the sort option after you have started to define entries, you may get unexpected results.

Top

## 3. Setting Up

In the preamble you need to indicate whether you want to use Option 1, Option 2 or Option 3. It’s not possible to mix these options within a document.

Top

###

### 3.1 Option 1

The command

\makenoidxglossaries \makenoidxglossaries

must be placed in the preamble. This sets up the internal commands required to make Option 1 work. If you omit \makenoidxglossaries none of the glossaries will be displayed.

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###

### 3.2 Options 2 and 3

The command

\makeglossaries \makeglossaries

must be placed in the preamble in order to create the customised makeindex (.ist) or xindy (.xdy) style file (for Options 2 or 3, respectively) and to ensure that glossary entries are written to the appropriate output files. If you omit \makeglossaries none of the glossary files will be created.

Note that some of the commands provided by the glossaries package must not be used after \makeglossaries as they are required when creating the customised style file. If you attempt to use those commands after \makeglossaries you will generate an error.

Similarly, there are some commands that must not be used before \makeglossaries.

You can suppress the creation of the customised xindy or makeindex style file using

\noist \noist

That this command must not be used after \makeglossaries.

Note that if you have a custom .xdy file created when using glossaries version 2.07 or below, you will need to use the compatible-2.07 package option with it.

The default name for the customised style file is given by \jobname.ist (Option 2) or \jobname.xdy (Option 3). This name may be changed using:

\setStyleFile \setStyleFile{⟨name⟩}

where ⟨name⟩ is the name of the style file without the extension. Note that this command must not be used after \makeglossaries.

Each glossary entry is assigned a number list that lists all the locations in the document where that entry was used. By default, the location refers to the page number but this may be overridden using the counter package option. The default form of the location number assumes a full stop compositor (e.g. 1.2), but if your location numbers use a different compositor (e.g. 1-2) you need to set this using

\glsSetCompositor \glsSetCompositor{⟨symbol⟩}

For example:

\glsSetCompositor{-}

This command must not be used after \makeglossaries.

If you use Option 3, you can have a different compositor for page numbers starting with an upper case alphabetical character using:

\glsSetAlphaCompositor \glsSetAlphaCompositor{⟨symbol⟩}

This command has no effect if you use Option 2. For example, if you want number lists containing a mixture of A-1 and 2.3 style formats, then do:

\glsSetCompositor{.}\glsSetAlphaCompositor{-}

See §5 Number lists for further information about number lists.

Top

## 4. Defining Glossary Entries

All glossary entries must be defined before they are used, so it is better to define them in the preamble to ensure this. In fact, some commands such as \longnewglossaryentry may only be used in the preamble. See §4.8 Drawbacks With Defining Entries in the Document Environment for a discussion of the problems with defining entries within the document instead of in the preamble.

Option 1 enforces the preamble-only restriction on \newglossaryentry.

Only those entries that are referenced in the document (using any of the commands described in §6 Links to Glossary Entries, §7 Adding an Entry to the Glossary Without Generating Text or §8 Cross-Referencing Entries) will appear in the glossary. See §10 Displaying a glossary to find out how to display the glossary.

New glossary entries are defined using the command:

\newglossaryentry \newglossaryentry{⟨label⟩}{⟨key=value list⟩}

This is a short command, so values in ⟨key-val list⟩ can’t contain any paragraph breaks. If you have a long description that needs to span multiple paragraphs, use

\longnewglossaryentry \longnewglossaryentry{⟨label⟩}{⟨key=value list⟩}{⟨long description⟩}

instead. Note that this command may only be used in the preamble. Be careful of unwanted spaces. \longnewglossaryentry will remove trailing spaces in the description (via \unskip) but won’t remove leading spaces (otherwise it would interfere with commands like \Glsentrydesc).

There are also commands that will only define the entry if it hasn’t already been defined:

\provideglossaryentry \provideglossaryentry{⟨label⟩}{⟨key=value list⟩}

and

\longprovideglossaryentry

\longprovideglossaryentry{⟨label⟩}{⟨key=value list⟩}{⟨long description⟩}

(These are both preamble-only commands.)

For all the above commands, the first argument, ⟨label⟩, must be a unique label with which to identify this entry. This can’t contain any non-expandable commands or active characters.

Note that although an extended Latin character or other non-Latin character, such as é or ß, looks like a plain character in your .tex file, it’s actually a macro (an active character) and therefore can’t be used in the label. (This applies to LA TEX rather than XeLaTeX.) Also be careful of babel’s options that change certain punctuation characters (such as : or -) to active characters.

The second argument, ⟨key=value list⟩, is a ⟨key⟩=⟨value⟩ list that supplies the relevant information about this entry. There are two required fields: description and either name or parent. The description is set in the third argument of \longnewglossaryentry and \longprovideglossaryentry. With the other commands it’s set via the description key. Available fields are listed below:

name
  The name of the entry (as it will appear in the glossary). If this key is omitted and the parent key is supplied, this value will be the same as the parent’s name.
description
  A brief description of this term (to appear in the glossary). Within this value, you can use

  \nopostdesc \nopostdesc

  to suppress the description terminator for this entry. For example, if this entry is a parent entry that doesn’t require a description, you can do description={\nopostdesc}. If you want a paragraph break in the description use

  \glspar \glspar

  or, better, use \longnewglossaryentry. However, note that not all glossary styles support multi-line descriptions. If you are using one of the tabular-like glossary styles that permit multi-line descriptions, use \newline not \\ if you want to force a line break.

parent
  The label of the parent entry. Note that the parent entry must be defined before its sub-entries. See §4.5 Sub-Entries for further details.
descriptionplural
  The plural form of the description, if required. If omitted, the value is set to the same as the description key.
text
  How this entry will appear in the document text when using \gls (or one of its upper case variants). If this field is omitted, the value of the name key is used.
first
  How the entry will appear in the document text on first use with \gls (or one of its upper case variants). If this field is omitted, the value of the text key is used. Note that if you use \glspl, \Glspl, \GLSpl, \glsdisp before using \gls, the firstplural value won’t be used with \gls.
plural
  How the entry will appear in the document text when using \glspl (or one of its upper case variants). If this field is omitted, the value is obtained by appending \glspluralsuffix to the value of the text field. The default value of \glspluralsuffix is the letter “s”.
firstplural
  How the entry will appear in the document text on first use with \glspl (or one of its upper case variants). If this field is omitted, the value is obtained from the plural key, if the first key is omitted, or by appending \glspluralsuffix to the value of the first field, if the first field is present. Note that if you use \gls, \Gls, \GLS, \glsdisp before using \glspl, the firstplural value won’t be used with \glspl.

  Note: prior to version 1.13, the default value of firstplural was always taken by appending “s” to the first key, which meant that you had to specify both plural and firstplural, even if you hadn’t used the first key.

symbol
  This field is provided to allow the user to specify an associated symbol. If omitted, the value is set to \relax. Note that not all glossary styles display the symbol.
symbolplural
  This is the plural form of the symbol (as passed to \glsdisplay and \glsdisplayfirst by \glspl, \Glspl and \GLSpl). If omitted, the value is set to the same as the symbol key.
sort
  This value indicates how this entry should be sorted. If omitted, the value is given by the name field unless one of the package options sort=def and sort=use have been used. In general, it’s best to use the sort key if the name contains commands (e.g. \ensuremath{\alpha}). You can also override the sort key by redefining \glsprestandardsort (see §2.4 Sorting Options).

  Option 1 by default strips the standard LA TEX accents (that is, accents generated by core LA TEX commands) from the name key when it sets the sort key. So with Option 1:

  \newglossaryentry{elite}{%
  name={{\’e}lite},
  description={select group of people}
  }

  This is equivalent to:

  \newglossaryentry{elite}{%
  name={{\’e}lite},
  description={select group of people},
  sort={elite}
  }

  Unless you use the package option sanitizesort=true, in which case it’s equivalent to:

  \newglossaryentry{elite}{%
  name={{\’e}lite},
  description={select group of people},
  sort={\’elite}
  }

  This will place the entry before the “A” letter group since the sort value starts with a symbol.

  Similarly if you use the inputenc package:

  \newglossaryentry{elite}{%
  name={{é}lite},
  description={select group of people}
  }
  This is equivalent to
  \newglossaryentry{elite}{%
  name={{é}lite},
  description={select group of people},
  sort=elite
  }
  Unless you use the package option sanitizesort=true, in which case it’s equivalent to:
  \newglossaryentry{elite}{%
  name={{é}lite},
  description={select group of people},
  sort=é lite
  }
  Again, this will place the entry before the “A” group.

  With Options 2 and 3, the default value of sort will either be set to the name key (if sanitizesort=true) or it will set it to the expansion of the name key (if sanitizesort=false).

  Take care with xindy (Option 3): if you have entries with the same sort value they will be treated as the same entry.

  Take care if you use Option 1 and the name contains fragile commands. You will either need to explicitly set the sort key or use the sanitizesort=true package option (unless you use the def or use sort methods).

type
  This specifies the label of the glossary in which this entry belongs. If omitted, the default glossary is assumed unless \newacronym is used (see §13 Acronyms).
user1, …, user6
  Six keys provided for any additional information the user may want to specify. (For example, an associated dimension or an alternative plural or some other grammatical construct.) Alternatively, you can add new keys using \glsaddkey (see §4.3 Additional Keys). Other keys are also provided by the glossaries-prefix (§17 Prefixes or Determiners) and glossaries-accsupp (§18 Accessibility Support) packages.
nonumberlist
  A boolean key. If the value is missing or is true, this will suppress the number list just for this entry. Conversely, if you have used the package option nonumberlist, you can activate the number list just for this entry with nonumberlist=false. (See §5 Number lists.)
see
  Cross-reference another entry. Using the see key will automatically add this entry to the glossary, but will not automatically add the cross-referenced entry. The referenced entry should be supplied as the value to this key. If you want to override the “see” tag, you can supply the new tag in square brackets before the label. For example see=[see also]{anotherlabel}. Note that if you have suppressed the number list, the cross-referencing information won’t appear in the glossary, as it forms part of the number list. You can override this for individual glossary entries using nonumberlist=false (see above). Alternatively, you can use the seeautonumberlist package option. For further details, see §8 Cross-Referencing Entries.

  For Options 2 and 3, \makeglossaries must be used before any occurrence of \newglossaryentry that contains the see key.

The following keys are reserved for \newacronym (see §13 Acronyms): long, longplural, short and shortplural. Additional keys are provided by the glossaries-prefix (§17 Prefixes or Determiners) and the glossaries-accsupp (§18 Accessibility Support) packages. You can also define your own custom keys (see §4.3 Additional Keys).

Note that if the name starts with non-Latin character, you must group the character, otherwise it will cause a problem for commands like \Gls and \Glspl. For example:

\newglossaryentry{elite}{name={{\’e}lite},
description={select group or class}}

Note that the same applies if you are using the inputenc package:

\newglossaryentry{elite}{name={{é}lite},
description={select group or class}}
(This doesn’t apply for XeLaTeX documents using the fontspec package. For further details, see the section “UTF-8” in the mfirstuc user manual.)

Note that in both of the above examples, you will also need to supply the sort key if you are using Option 2 whereas xindy (Option 3) is usually able to sort non-Latin characters correctly. Option 1 discards accents from standard LA TEX extended Latin characters unless you use the sanitizesort=true.

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### 4.1 Plurals

You may have noticed from above that you can specify the plural form when you define a term. If you omit this, the plural will be obtained by appending

\glspluralsuffix \glspluralsuffix

to the singular form. This command defaults to the letter “s”. For example:

\newglossaryentry{cow}{name=cow,description={a fully grown
female of any bovine animal}}

defines a new entry whose singular form is “cow” and plural form is “cows”. However, if you are writing in archaic English, you may want to use “kine” as the plural form, in which case you would have to do:

\newglossaryentry{cow}{name=cow,plural=kine,
description={a fully grown female of any bovine animal}}

If you are writing in a language that supports multiple plurals (for a given term) then use the plural key for one of them and one of the user keys to specify the other plural form. For example:

\newglossaryentry{cow}{%
name=cow,%
description={a fully grown female of any bovine animal
(plural cows, archaic plural kine)},%
user1={kine}}

You can then use \glspl{cow} to produce “cows” and \glsuseri{cow} to produce “kine”. You can, of course, define an easy to remember synonym. For example:

\let\glsaltpl\glsuseri

Then you don’t have to remember which key you used to store the second plural. Alternatively, you can define your own keys using \glsaddkey, described in §4.3 Additional Keys.

If you are using a language that usually forms plurals by appending a different letter, or sequence of letters, you can redefine \glspluralsuffix as required. However, this must be done before the entries are defined. For languages that don’t form plurals by simply appending a suffix, all the plural forms must be specified using the plural key (and the firstplural key where necessary).

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###

### 4.2 Other Grammatical Constructs

You can use the six user keys to provide alternatives, such as participles. For example:

\let\glsing\glsuseri
\let\glsd\glsuserii
\newcommand*{\ingkey}{user1}
\newcommand*{\edkey}{user2}
\newcommand*{\newword}[3][]{%
\newglossaryentry{#2}{%
name={#2},%
description={#3},%
\edkey={#2ed},%
\ingkey={#2ing},#1%
}%
}

With the above definitions, I can now define terms like this:

\newword{play}{to take part in activities for enjoyment}
\newword[\edkey={ran},\ingkey={running}]{run}{to move fast using
the legs}

and use them in the text:

Peter is \glsing{play} in the park today.
Jane \glsd{play} in the park yesterday.
Peter and Jane \glsd{run} in the park last week.

Alternatively, you can define your own keys using \glsaddkey, described below in §4.3 Additional Keys.

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###

### 4.3 Additional Keys

You can now also define your own custom keys using:

\glsaddkey \glsaddkey{⟨key⟩}{⟨default value⟩}{⟨no link cs⟩}{⟨no link ucfirst cs⟩}{⟨link cs⟩}{⟨link ucfirst cs⟩}{⟨link allcaps cs⟩}

where:

⟨key⟩
  is the new key to use in \newglossaryentry (or similar commands such as \longnewglossaryentry);
⟨default value⟩
  is the default value to use if this key isn’t used in an entry definition (this may reference the current entry label via \glslabel, but you will have to switch on expansion via the starred version of \glsaddkey and protect fragile commands);
⟨no link cs⟩
  is the control sequence to use analogous to commands like \glsentrytext;
⟨no link ucfirst cs⟩
  is the control sequence to use analogous to commands like \Glsentrytext;
⟨link cs⟩
  is the control sequence to use analogous to commands like \glstext;
⟨link ucfirst cs⟩
  is the control sequence to use analogous to commands like \Glstext;
⟨link allcaps cs⟩
  is the control sequence to use analogous to commands like \GLStext.

The starred version of \glsaddkey switches on expansion for this key. The unstarred version doesn’t override the current expansion setting.

Example 3 (Defining Custom Keys)

Suppose I want to define two new keys, ed and ing, that default to the entry text followed by “ed” and “ing”, respectively. The default value will need expanding in both cases, so I need to use the starred form:

% Define "ed" key:
\glsaddkey*
{ed}% key
{\glsentrytext{\glslabel}ed}% default value
{\glsentryed}% command analogous to \glsentrytext
{\Glsentryed}% command analogous to \Glsentrytext
{\glsed}% command analogous to \glstext
{\Glsed}% command analogous to \Glstext
{\GLSed}% command analogous to \GLStext
% Define "ing" key:
\glsaddkey*
{ing}% key
{\glsentrytext{\glslabel}ing}% default value
{\glsentrying}% command analogous to \glsentrytext
{\Glsentrying}% command analogous to \Glsentrytext
{\glsing}% command analogous to \glstext
{\Glsing}% command analogous to \Glstext
{\GLSing}% command analogous to \GLStext

Now I can define some entries:

% No need to override defaults for this entry:
\newglossaryentry{jump}{name={jump},description={}}
% Need to override defaults on these entries:
\newglossaryentry{run}{name={run},%
ed={ran},%
ing={running},%
description={}}
\newglossaryentry{waddle}{name={waddle},%
ed={waddled},%
ing={waddling},%
description={}}

These entries can later be used in the document:

The dog \glsed{jump} over the duck.
The duck was \glsing{waddle} round the dog.
The dog \glsed{run} away from the duck.

For a complete document, see the sample file sample-newkeys.tex.

____________________________

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###

### 4.4 Expansion

When you define new glossary entries expansion is performed by default, except for the name, description, descriptionplural, symbol, symbolplural and sort keys (these keys all have expansion suppressed via \glssetnoexpandfield).

You can switch expansion on or off for individual keys using

\glssetexpandfield \glssetexpandfield{⟨field⟩}

or

\glssetnoexpandfield \glssetnoexpandfield{⟨field⟩}

respectively, where ⟨field⟩ is the field tag corresponding to the key. In most cases, this is the same as the name of the key except for those listed in table 4.1.

Table 4.1: Key to Field Mappings

Key | Field
sort | sortvalue
firstplural | firstpl
description | desc
descriptionplural | descplural
user1 | useri
user2 | userii
user3 | useriii
user4 | useriv
user5 | userv
user6 | uservi
longplural | longpl
shortplural | shortpl

Any keys that haven’t had the expansion explicitly set using \glssetexpandfield or \glssetnoexpandfield are governed by

\glsexpandfields \glsexpandfields

and

\glsnoexpandfields \glsnoexpandfields

If your entries contain any fragile commands, I recommend you switch off expansion via \glsnoexpandfields. (This should be used before you define the entries.)

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###

### 4.5 Sub-Entries

As from version 1.17, it is possible to specify sub-entries. These may be used to order the glossary into categories, in which case the sub-entry will have a different name to its parent entry, or it may be used to distinguish different definitions for the same word, in which case the sub-entries will have the same name as the parent entry. Note that not all glossary styles support hierarchical entries and may display all the entries in a flat format. Of the styles that support sub-entries, some display the sub-entry’s name whilst others don’t. Therefore you need to ensure that you use a suitable style. (See §15 Glossary Styles for a list of predefined styles.) As from version 3.0, level 1 sub-entries are automatically numbered in the predefined styles if you use the subentrycounter package option (see §2.3 Glossary Appearance Options for further details).

Note that the parent entry will automatically be added to the glossary if any of its child entries are used in the document. If the parent entry is not referenced in the document, it will not have a number list. Note also that makeindex has a restriction on the maximum sub-entry depth.

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####

#### 4.5.1 Hierarchical Categories

To arrange a glossary with hierarchical categories, you need to first define the category and then define the sub-entries using the relevant category entry as the value of the parent key.

Example 4 (Hierarchical Categories—Greek and Roman Mathematical Symbols)

Suppose I want a glossary of mathematical symbols that are divided into Greek letters and Roman letters. Then I can define the categories as follows:

\newglossaryentry{greekletter}{name={Greek letters},
description={\nopostdesc}}
\newglossaryentry{romanletter}{name={Roman letters},
description={\nopostdesc}}

Note that in this example, the category entries don’t need a description so I have set the descriptions to \nopostdesc. This gives a blank description and suppresses the description terminator.

I can now define my sub-entries as follows:

\newglossaryentry{pi}{name={\ensuremath{\pi}},sort={pi},
description={ratio of the circumference of a circle to
the diameter},
parent=greekletter}
\newglossaryentry{C}{name={\ensuremath{C}},sort={C},
description={Euler’s constant},
parent=romanletter}

For a complete document, see the sample file sampletree.tex.

____________________________

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####

#### 4.5.2 Homographs

Sub-entries that have the same name as the parent entry, don’t need to have the name key. For example, the word “glossary” can mean a list of technical words or a collection of glosses. In both cases the plural is “glossaries”. So first define the parent entry:

\newglossaryentry{glossary}{name=glossary,
description={\nopostdesc},
plural={glossaries}}

Again, the parent entry has no description, so the description terminator needs to be suppressed using \nopostdesc.

Now define the two different meanings of the word:

\newglossaryentry{glossarylist}{
description={list of technical words},
sort={1},
parent={glossary}}
\newglossaryentry{glossarycol}{
description={collection of glosses},
sort={2},
parent={glossary}}

Note that if I reference the parent entry, the location will be added to the parent’s number list, whereas if I reference any of the child entries, the location will be added to the child entry’s number list. Note also that since the sub-entries have the same name, the sort key is required unless you are using the sort=use or sort=def package options (see §2.4 Sorting Options). You can use the subentrycounter package option to automatically number the first-level child entries. See §2.3 Glossary Appearance Options for further details.

In the above example, the plural form for both of the child entries is the same as the parent entry, so the plural key was not required for the child entries. However, if the sub-entries have different plurals, they will need to be specified. For example:

\newglossaryentry{bravo}{name={bravo},
description={\nopostdesc}}
\newglossaryentry{bravocry}{description={cry of approval
(pl.\ bravos)},
sort={1},
plural={bravos},
parent=bravo}
\newglossaryentry{bravoruffian}{description={hired
ruffian or killer (pl.\ bravoes)},
sort={2},
plural={bravoes},
parent=bravo}

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###

### 4.6 Loading Entries From a File

You can store all your glossary entry definitions in another file and use:

\loadglsentries \loadglsentries[⟨type⟩]{⟨filename⟩}

where ⟨filename⟩ is the name of the file containing all the \newglossaryentry or \longnewglossaryentry commands. The optional argument ⟨type⟩ is the name of the glossary to which those entries should belong, for those entries where the type key has been omitted (or, more specifically, for those entries whose type has been specified by \glsdefaulttype, which is what \newglossaryentry uses by default).

This is a preamble-only command. You may also use \input to load the file but don’t use \include.

If you want to use \AtBeginDocument to \input all your entries automatically at the start of the document, add the \AtBeginDocument command before you load the glossaries package (and babel, if you are also loading that) to avoid the creation of the .glsdefs file and any associated problems that are caused by defining commands in the document environment. (See §4.8 Drawbacks With Defining Entries in the Document Environment.)

Example 5 (Loading Entries from Another File)

Suppose I have a file called myentries.tex which contains:

\newglossaryentry{perl}{type=main,
name={Perl},
description={A scripting language}}
\newglossaryentry{tex}{name={\TeX},
description={A typesetting language},sort={TeX}}
\newglossaryentry{html}{type=\glsdefaulttype,
name={html},
description={A mark up language}}

and suppose in my document preamble I use the command:

\loadglsentries[languages]{myentries}

then this will add the entries tex and html to the glossary whose type is given by languages, but the entry perl will be added to the main glossary, since it explicitly sets the type to main.

____________________________

Note: if you use \newacronym (see §13 Acronyms) the type is set as type=\acronymtype unless you explicitly override it. For example, if my file myacronyms.tex contains:

\newacronym{aca}{aca}{a contrived acronym}

then (supposing I have defined a new glossary type called altacronym)

\loadglsentries[altacronym]{myacronyms}

will add aca to the glossary type acronym, if the package option acronym has been specified, or will add aca to the glossary type altacronym, if the package option acronym is not specified.4.1

If you have used the acronym package option, there are two possible solutions to this problem:

1. Change myacronyms.tex so that entries are defined in the form:
   \newacronym[type=\glsdefaulttype]{aca}{aca}{a
   contrived acronym}

   and do:

   \loadglsentries[altacronym]{myacronyms}

2. Temporarily change \acronymtype to the target glossary:
   \let\orgacronymtype\acronymtype
   \renewcommand{\acronymtype}{altacronym}
   \loadglsentries{myacronyms}
   \let\acronymtype\orgacronymtype

Note that only those entries that have been used in the text will appear in the relevant glossaries. Note also that \loadglsentries may only be used in the preamble.

Remember that you can use \provideglossaryentry rather than \newglossaryentry. Suppose you want to maintain a large database of acronyms or terms that you’re likely to use in your documents, but you may want to use a modified version of some of those entries. (Suppose, for example, one document may require a more detailed description.) Then if you define the entries using \provideglossaryentry in your database file, you can override the definition by simply using \newglossaryentry before loading the file. For example, suppose your file (called, say, terms.tex) contains:

\provideglossaryentry{mallard}{name=mallard,
description={a type of duck}}

but suppose your document requires a more detailed description, you can do:

\usepackage{glossaries}
\makeglossaries
\newglossaryentry{mallard}{name=mallard,
description={a dabbling duck where the male has a green head}}
\loadglsentries{terms}

Now the mallard definition in the terms.tex file will be ignored.

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###

### 4.7 Moving Entries to Another Glossary

As from version 3.02, you can move an entry from one glossary to another using:

\glsmoveentry \glsmoveentry{⟨label⟩}{⟨target glossary label⟩}

where ⟨label⟩ is the unique label identifying the required entry and ⟨target glossary label⟩ is the unique label identifying the glossary in which to put the entry.

Note that no check is performed to determine the existence of the target glossary. If you want to move an entry to a glossary that’s skipped by \printglossaries, then define an ignored glossary with \newignoredglossary. (See §12 Defining New Glossaries.)

Unpredictable results may occur if you move an entry to a different glossary from its parent or children.

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###

### 4.8 Drawbacks With Defining Entries in the Document Environment

Originally, \newglossaryentry (and \newacronym) could only be used in the preamble. I reluctantly removed this restriction in version 1.13, but there are issues with defining commands in the document environment instead of the preamble, which is why the restriction is maintained for newer commands. This restriction is also reimposed for \newglossaryentry by the new Option 1.

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####

#### 4.8.1 Technical Issues

1. If you define an entry mid-way through your document, but subsequently shuffle sections around, you could end up using an entry before it has been defined.
2. Entry information is required when displaying the glossary. If this occurs at the start of the document, but the entries aren’t defined until later, then the entry details are being looked up before the entry has been defined.
3. If you use a package, such as babel, that makes certain characters active at the start of the document environment, there will be a problem if those characters have a special significance when defining glossary entries. These characters include the double-quote " character, the exclamation mark ! character, the question mark ? character, and the pipe | character. They must not be active when defining a glossary entry where they occur in the sort key (and they should be avoided in the label if they may be active at any point in the document). Additionally, the comma , character and the equals = character should not be active when using commands that have ⟨key⟩=⟨value⟩ arguments.

To overcome the first two problems, as from version 4.0 the glossaries package modifies the definition of \newglossaryentry at the beginning of the document environment so that the definitions are written to an external file (\jobname.glsdefs) which is then read in at the start of the document on the next run. The entry will then only be defined in the document environment if it doesn’t already exist. This means that the entry can now be looked up in the glossary, even if the glossary occurs at the beginning of the document.

There are drawbacks to this mechanism: if you modify an entry definition, you need a second run to see the effect of your modification; this method requires an extra \newwrite, which may exceed TEX’s maximum allocation; unexpected expansion issues could occur; if you have very long entries, you could find unexpected line breaks have been written to the temporary file causing spurious spaces (or, even worse, a command name could get split across a line causing an error message).

The last reason is why \longnewglossaryentry has the preamble-only restriction, which I don’t intend to lift.

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####

#### 4.8.2 Good Practice Issues

The above section covers technical issues that can cause your document to have compilation errors or produce incorrect output. This section focuses on good writing practice. The main reason cited by users wanting to define entries within the document environment rather than in the preamble is that they want to write the definition as they type in their document text. This suggests a “stream of consciousness” style of writing that may be acceptable in certain literary genres but is inappropriate for factual documents.

When you write technical documents, regardless of whether it’s a PhD thesis or an article for a journal or proceedings, you must plan what you write in advance. If you plan in advance, you should have a fairly good idea of the type of terminology that your document will contain, so while you are planning, create a new file with all your entry definitions. If, while you’re writing your document, you remember another term you need, then you can switch over to your definition file and add it. Most text editors have the ability to have more than one file open at a time. The other advantage to this approach is that if you forget the label, you can look it up in the definition file rather than searching through your document text to find the definition.

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## 5. Number lists

Each entry in the glossary has an associated number list. By default, these numbers refer to the pages on which that entry has been used (using any of the commands described in §6 Links to Glossary Entries and §7 Adding an Entry to the Glossary Without Generating Text). The number list can be suppressed using the nonumberlist package option, or an alternative counter can be set as the default using the counter package option. The number list is also referred to as the location list.

Due to the asynchronous nature of TEX’s output routine (see, for example, Finding if you’re on an odd or an even page) the page counter (represented internally as \c@page) can be unreliable. This can cause problems when glossary entries are referenced in a paragraph that spans a page break. To compensate, the glossaries package has to make some adjustments to ensure the location number is correct for this situation. By default, the adjustments only affect the counter styles: roman, Roman, alph, Alph and arabic. If you have a different numbering system where \⟨cs name⟩{page} expands to \⟨internal cs name⟩\c@page you need to use:

\glsaddprotectedpagefmt \glsaddprotectedpagefmt{⟨internal cs name⟩}

For example, suppose you have a style samplenum that is implemented as follows:

\newcommand*{\samplenum}[1]{%
\expandafter\@samplenum\csname c@#1\endcsname}
\newcommand*{\@samplenum}[1]{\two@digits{#1}}

(That is, it displays the value of the counter as a two-digit number.) Then to ensure the location is correct for entries in page-spanning paragraphs, you need to do:

\glsaddprotectedpagefmt{@samplenum}

(If you are using a different counter for the location, such as section or equation, you don’t need to worry about this.)

If the inner macro (as given by \⟨internal cs name⟩) contains non-expandable commands then you may need to redefine \gls⟨internal cs name⟩page after using \glsaddprotectedpagefmt{⟨internal cs name⟩}. This command doesn’t take any arguments as the location is assumed to be given by \c@page. For example, suppose now my page counter format uses small caps Roman numerals:

\newcommand*{\samplenum}[1]{%
\expandafter\@samplenum\csname c@#1\endcsname}
\newcommand*{\@samplenum}[1]{\textsc{\romannumeral#1}}

Again, the inner macro needs to be identified using:

\glsaddprotectedpagefmt{@samplenum}

However, since \textsc isn’t fully expandable, the location is written to the file as \textsc {i} (for page 1), \textsc {ii} (for page 2), etc. This format may cause a problem for the indexing application (particularly for makeindex). To compensate for this, the \gls⟨internal cs name⟩page command may be redefined so that it expands to a format that’s acceptable to the indexing application. For example:

\renewcommand*{\gls@samplenumpage}{\romannumeral\c@page}

While this modification means that the location list in the glossary won’t exactly match the format of the page numbers (displaying lower case Roman numbers instead of small cap Roman numerals) this method will at least work correctly for both makeindex and xindy. If you are using xindy, the following definition:

\renewcommand*{\gls@samplenumpage}{%
\glsbackslash\string\textsc{\romannumeral\c@page}}

combined with

\GlsAddXdyLocation{romansc}{:sep "\string\textsc\glsopenbrace"
"roman-numbers-lowercase" :sep "\glsclosebrace"}

will now have lowercase Roman numerals in the location list. (This option may cause problems if your locations should be hyperlinks.)

Another possibility that will work with both makeindex and xindy is to redefine \gls⟨internal cs name⟩page (\gls@samplenumpage in this example) to just expand to the decimal page number and redefine \glsnumberformat to change the displayed format:

\renewcommand*{\gls@samplenumpage}{\number\c@page}
\renewcommand*{\glsnumberformat}[1]{\textsc{\romannumeral#1}}

If you redefine \gls⟨internal cs name⟩page, you must make sure that \c@page is expanded when it’s written to the file. (So don’t, for example, hide \c@page inside a robust command.)

Both makeindex and xindy (Options 2 and 3) concatenate a sequence of 3 or more consecutive pages into a range. With xindy (Option 3) you can vary the minimum sequence length using \GlsSetXdyMinRangeLength{⟨n⟩} where ⟨n⟩ is either an integer or the keyword none which indicates that there should be no range formation.

Note that \GlsSetXdyMinRangeLength must be used before \makeglossaries and has no effect if \noist is used.

With both makeindex and xindy (Options 2 and 3), you can replace the separator and the closing number in the range using:

\glsSetSuffixF \glsSetSuffixF{⟨suffix⟩}

\glsSetSuffixFF \glsSetSuffixFF{⟨suffix⟩}

where the former command specifies the suffix to use for a 2 page list and the latter specifies the suffix to use for longer lists. For example:

\glsSetSuffixF{f.}
\glsSetSuffixFF{ff.}

Note that if you use xindy (Option 3), you will also need to set the minimum range length to 1 if you want to change these suffixes:

\GlsSetXdyMinRangeLength{1}

Note that if you use the hyperref package, you will need to use \nohyperpage in the suffix to ensure that the hyperlinks work correctly. For example:

\glsSetSuffixF{\nohyperpage{f.}}
\glsSetSuffixFF{\nohyperpage{ff.}}

Note that \glsSetSuffixF and \glsSetSuffixFF must be used before \makeglossaries and have no effect if \noist is used.

Option 1 doesn’t form ranges. However, with this option you can iterate over an entry’s number list using:

\glsnumberlistloop \glsnumberlistloop{⟨label⟩}{⟨handler cs⟩}{⟨xr handler cs⟩}

where ⟨label⟩ is the entry’s label and ⟨handler cs⟩ is a handler control sequence of the form:

⟨handler cs⟩{⟨prefix⟩}{⟨counter⟩}{⟨format⟩}{⟨location⟩}

where ⟨prefix⟩ is the hyperref prefix, ⟨counter⟩ is the name of the counter used for the location, ⟨format⟩ is the format used to display the location (e.g. textbf) and ⟨location⟩ is the location. The third argument is the control sequence to use for any cross-references in the list. This handler should have the syntax:

⟨xr handler cs⟩[⟨tag⟩]{⟨xr list⟩}

where ⟨tag⟩ is the cross-referenced text (e.g. “see”) and ⟨xr list⟩ is a comma-separated list of labels. (This actually has a third argument but it’s always empty when used with Option 1.)

For example, if on page 12 I have used

\gls[format=textbf]{apple}

and on page 18 I have used

\gls[format=emph]{apple}

then

\glsnumberlistloop{apple}{\myhandler}

will be equivalent to:

\myhandler{}{page}{textbf}{12}%
\myhandler{}{page}{emph}{18}%

There is a predefined handler that’s used to display the number list in the glossary:

\glsnoidxdisplayloc \glsnoidxdisplayloc{⟨prefix⟩}{⟨counter⟩}{⟨format⟩}{⟨location⟩}

The predefined handler used for the cross-references in the glossary is:

\glsseeformat[⟨tag⟩]{⟨xr list⟩}{⟨location⟩}

which is described in §8.1 Customising Cross-reference Text.

\glsnumberlistloop is not available for Options 2 and 3.

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## 6. Links to Glossary Entries

Once you have defined a glossary entry using \newglossaryentry or \newacronym (see §13 Acronyms), you can refer to that entry in the document using one of the commands listed in §6.1 The \gls-Like Commands (First Use Flag Queried) or §6.2 The \glstext-Like Commands (First Use Flag Not Queried). The text which appears at that point in the document when using one of these commands is referred to as the link text (even if there are no hyperlinks). These commands also add a line to an external file that is used to generate the relevant entry in the glossary. This information includes an associated location that is added to the number list for that entry. By default, the location refers to the page number. For further information on number lists, see §5 Number lists. These external files need to be post-processed by makeindex or xindy unless you have chosen Option 1. If you don’t use \makeglossaries these external files won’t be created.

I strongly recommend that you don’t use the commands defined in this chapter in the arguments of sectioning or caption commands or any other command that has a moving argument.

Aside from problems with expansion issues, PDF bookmarks and possible nested hyperlinks in the table of contents (or list of whatever) any use of the commands described in §6.1 The \gls-Like Commands (First Use Flag Queried) will have their first use flag unset when they appear in the table of contents (or list of whatever).

The above warning is particularly important if you are using the glossaries package in conjunction with the hyperref package. Instead, use one of the expandable commands listed in §9 Using Glossary Terms Without Links (such as \glsentrytext but not the non-expandable case changing versions like \Glsentrytext). Alternatively, provide an alternative via the optional argument to the sectioning/caption command or use hyperref’s \texorpdfstring. Examples:

\chapter{An overview of \glsentrytext{perl}}
\chapter[An overview of Perl]{An overview of \gls{perl}}
\chapter{An overview of \texorpdfstring{\gls{perl}}{Perl}}

If you want the link text to produce a hyperlink to the corresponding entry details in the glossary, you should load the hyperref package before the glossaries package. That’s what I’ve done in this document, so if you see a hyperlinked term, such as link text, you can click on the word or phrase and it will take you to a brief description in this document’s glossary.

If you use the hyperref package, I strongly recommend you use pdflatex rather than latex to compile your document, if possible. The DVI format of LA TEX has limitations with the hyperlinks that can cause a problem when used with the glossaries package. Firstly, the DVI format can’t break a hyperlink across a line whereas PDFLA TEX can. This means that long glossary entries (for example, the full form of an acronym) won’t be able to break across a line with the DVI format. Secondly, the DVI format doesn’t correctly size hyperlinks in subscripts or superscripts. This means that if you define a term that may be used as a subscript or superscript, if you use the DVI format, it won’t come out the correct size.

These are limitations of the DVI format not of the glossaries package.

It may be that you only want terms in certain glossaries to have hyperlinks, but not for other glossaries. In this case, you can use the package option nohypertypes to identify the glossary lists that shouldn’t have hyperlinked link text. See §2.1 General Options for further details.

The way the link text is displayed depends on

\glstextformat \glstextformat{⟨text⟩}

For example, to make all link text appear in a sans-serif font, do:

\renewcommand*{\glstextformat}[1]{\textsf{#1}}

Further customisation can be done via \defglsentryfmt or by redefining \glsentryfmt. See §6.3 Changing the format of the link text for further details.

Each entry has an associated conditional referred to as the first use flag. Some of the commands described in this chapter automatically unset this flag and can also use it to determine what text should be displayed. These types of commands are the \gls-like commands and are described in §6.1 The \gls-Like Commands (First Use Flag Queried). The commands that don’t reference or change the first use flag are \glstext-like commands and are described in §6.2 The \glstext-Like Commands (First Use Flag Not Queried). See §14 Unsetting and Resetting Entry Flags for commands that unset or reset the first use flag without referencing the entries.

The \gls-like and \glstext-like commands all take a first optional argument that is a comma-separated list of ⟨key⟩=⟨value⟩ options, described below. They also have a star-variant, which inserts hyper=false at the start of the list of options and a plus-variant, which inserts hyper=true at the start of the list of options. For example \gls*{sample} is the same as \gls[hyper=false]{sample} and \gls+{sample} is the same as \gls[hyper=true]{sample}, whereas just \gls{sample} will use the default hyperlink setting which depends on a number of factors (such as whether the entry is in a glossary that has been identified in the nohypertypes list). You can override the hyper key in the variant’s optional argument, for example, \gls*[hyper=true]{sample} but this creates redundancy and is best avoided.

The following keys are available for the optional argument:

hyper
  This is a boolean key which can be used to enable/disable the hyperlink to the relevant entry in the glossary. If this key is omitted, the value is determined by current settings, as indicated above. For example, when used with a \gls-like command, if this is the first use and the hyperfirst=false package option has been used, then the default value is hyper=false. The hyperlink can be forced on using hyper=true unless the hyperlinks have been suppressed using \glsdisablehyper. You must load the hyperref package before the glossaries package to ensure the hyperlinks work.
format
  This specifies how to format the associated location number for this entry in the glossary. This value is equivalent to the makeindex encap value, and (as with \index) the value needs to be the name of a command without the initial backslash. As with \index, the characters ( and ) can also be used to specify the beginning and ending of a number range. Again as with \index, the command should be the name of a command which takes an argument (which will be the associated location). Be careful not to use a declaration (such as bfseries) instead of a text block command (such as textbf) as the effect is not guaranteed to be localised. If you want to apply more than one style to a given entry (e.g. bold and italic) you will need to create a command that applies both formats, e.g.
  \newcommand*{\textbfem}[1]{\textbf{\emph{#1}}}

  and use that command.

  In this document, the standard formats refer to the standard text block commands such as \textbf or \emph or any of the commands listed in table 6.1.

  If you use xindy instead of makeindex, you must specify any non-standard formats that you want to use with the format key using \GlsAddXdyAttribute{⟨name⟩}. So if you use xindy with the above example, you would need to add:
  \GlsAddXdyAttribute{textbfem}

  See §11 Xindy (Option 3) for further details.

  Note that unlike \index, you can’t have anything following the command name, such as an asterisk or arguments. If you want to cross-reference another entry, either use the see key when you define the entry or use \glssee (described in §8 Cross-Referencing Entries).

  If you are using hyperlinks and you want to change the font of the hyperlinked location, don’t use \hyperpage (provided by the hyperref package) as the locations may not refer to a page number. Instead, the glossaries package provides number formats listed in table 6.1.

  Table 6.1: Predefined Hyperlinked Location Formats

  hyperrm | serif hyperlink
  hypersf | sans-serif hyperlink
  hypertt | monospaced hyperlink
  hyperbf | bold hyperlink
  hypermd | medium weight hyperlink
  hyperit | italic hyperlink
  hypersl | slanted hyperlink
  hyperup | upright hyperlink
  hypersc | small caps hyperlink
  hyperemph | emphasized hyperlink

  Note that if the \hyperlink command hasn’t been defined, the hyper⟨xx⟩ formats are equivalent to the analogous text⟨xx⟩ font commands (and hyperemph is equivalent to emph). If you want to make a new format, you will need to define a command which takes one argument and use that. For example, if you want the location number to be in a bold sans-serif font, you can define a command called, say, \hyperbsf:

  \newcommand{\hyperbsf}[1]{\textbf{\hypersf{#1}}}

  and then use hyperbsf as the value for the format key. (See also “Displaying the glossary” in the documented code, glossaries-code.pdf.) Remember that if you use xindy, you will need to add this to the list of location attributes:

  \GlsAddXdyAttribute{hyperbsf}

counter
  This specifies which counter to use for this location. This overrides the default counter used by this entry. (See also §5 Number lists.)
local
  This is a boolean key that only makes a difference when used with \gls-like commands that change the entry’s first use flag. If local=true, the change to the first use flag will be localised to the current scope. The default is local=false.

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###

### 6.1 The \gls-Like Commands (First Use Flag Queried)

This section describes the commands that unset the first use flag on completion, and in most cases they use the current state of the flag to determine the text to be displayed. As described above, these commands all have a star-variant (hyper=false) and a plus-variant (hyper=true) and have an optional first argument that is a ⟨key⟩=⟨value⟩ list.

These commands use \glsentryfmt or the equivalent definition provided by \defglsentryfmt to determine the automatically generated text and its format (see §6.3 Changing the format of the link text).

Apart from \glsdisp, the commands described in this section also have a final optional argument ⟨insert⟩ which may be used to insert material into the automatically generated text.

Since the commands have a final optional argument, take care if you actually want to display an open square bracket after the command when the final optional argument is absent. Insert an empty set of braces {} immediately before the opening square bracket to prevent it from being interpreted as the final argument. For example:
\gls{sample} {}[Editor’s comment]

Don’t use any of the \gls-like or \glstext-like commands in the ⟨insert⟩ argument.

\gls \gls[⟨options⟩]{⟨label⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

This command typically determines the link text from the values of the text or first keys supplied when the entry was defined using \newglossaryentry. However, if the entry was defined using \newacronym and \setacronymstyle was used, then the link text will usually be determined from the long or short keys.

There are two upper case variants:

\Gls \Gls[⟨options⟩]{⟨label⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

and

\GLS \GLS[⟨options⟩]{⟨label⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

which make the first letter of the link text or all the link text upper case, respectively. For the former, the uppercasing of the first letter is performed by \makefirstuc. For further details, including its limitations, see the mfirstuc user manual.

There are also analogous plural forms:

\glspl \glspl[⟨options⟩]{⟨label⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

\Glspl \Glspl[⟨options⟩]{⟨label⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

\GLSpl \GLSpl[⟨options⟩]{⟨label⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

These typically determine the link text from the plural or firstplural keys supplied when the entry was defined using \newglossaryentry or, if the entry is an acronym and \setacronymstyle was used, from the longplural or shortplural keys.

Be careful when you use glossary entries in math mode especially if you are using hyperref as it can affect the spacing of subscripts and superscripts. For example, suppose you have defined the following entry:
\newglossaryentry{Falpha}{name={F_\alpha},
description=sample}

and later you use it in math mode:

$\gls{Falpha}^2$

This will result in Fα2 instead of Fα2. In this situation it’s best to bring the superscript into the hyperlink using the final ⟨insert⟩ optional argument:

$\gls{Falpha}[^2]$

\glsdisp \glsdisp[⟨options⟩]{⟨label⟩}{⟨link text⟩}

This behaves in the same way as the above commands, except that the ⟨link text⟩ is explicitly set. There’s no final optional argument as any inserted material can be added to the ⟨link text⟩ argument.

Don’t use any of the \gls-like or \glstext-like commands in the ⟨link text⟩ argument of \glsdisp.

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###

### 6.2 The \glstext-Like Commands (First Use Flag Not Queried)

This section describes the commands that don’t change or reference the first use flag. As described above, these commands all have a star-variant (hyper=false) and a plus-variant (hyper=true) and have an optional first argument that is a ⟨key⟩=⟨value⟩ list. These commands also don’t use \glsentryfmt or the equivalent definition provided by \defglsentryfmt (see §6.3 Changing the format of the link text).

Apart from \glslink, the commands described in this section also have a final optional argument ⟨insert⟩ which may be used to insert material into the automatically generated text. See the caveat above in §6.1 The \gls-Like Commands (First Use Flag Queried).

\glslink \glslink[⟨options⟩]{⟨label⟩}{⟨link text⟩}

This command explicitly sets the link text as given in the final argument.

Don’t use any of the \gls-like or \glstext-like commands in the argument of \glslink.

\glstext \glstext[⟨options⟩]{⟨label⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

This command always uses the value of the text key as the link text.

There are also analogous commands:

\Glstext \Glstext[⟨options⟩]{⟨text⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

\GLStext \GLStext[⟨options⟩]{⟨text⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

These convert the first character or all the characters to uppercase, respectively.

\glsfirst \glsfirst[⟨options⟩]{⟨label⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

This command always uses the value of the first key as the link text.

There are also analogous uppercasing commands:

\Glsfirst \Glsfirst[⟨options⟩]{⟨text⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

\GLSfirst \GLSfirst[⟨options⟩]{⟨text⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

\glsplural \glsplural[⟨options⟩]{⟨label⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

This command always uses the value of the plural key as the link text.

There are also analogous uppercasing commands:

\Glsplural \Glsplural[⟨options⟩]{⟨text⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

\GLSplural \GLSplural[⟨options⟩]{⟨text⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

\glsfirstplural \glsfirstplural[⟨options⟩]{⟨label⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

This command always uses the value of the firstplural key as the link text.

There are also analogous uppercasing commands:

\Glsfirstplural \Glsfirstplural[⟨options⟩]{⟨text⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

\GLSfirstplural \GLSfirstplural[⟨options⟩]{⟨text⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

\glsname \glsname[⟨options⟩]{⟨label⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

This command always uses the value of the name key as the link text. Note that this may be different from the values of the text or first keys. In general it’s better to use \glstext or \glsfirst instead of \glsname.

There are also analogous uppercasing commands:

\Glsname \Glsname[⟨options⟩]{⟨text⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

\GLSname \GLSname[⟨options⟩]{⟨text⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

In general it’s best to avoid \Glsname with acronyms. Instead, consider using \Acrlong, \Acrshort or \Acrfull.

\glssymbol \glssymbol[⟨options⟩]{⟨label⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

This command always uses the value of the symbol key as the link text.

There are also analogous uppercasing commands:

\Glssymbol \Glssymbol[⟨options⟩]{⟨text⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

\GLSsymbol \GLSsymbol[⟨options⟩]{⟨text⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

\glsdesc \glsdesc[⟨options⟩]{⟨label⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

This command always uses the value of the description key as the link text.

There are also analogous uppercasing commands:

\Glsdesc \Glsdesc[⟨options⟩]{⟨text⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

\GLSdesc \GLSdesc[⟨options⟩]{⟨text⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

\glsuseri \glsuseri[⟨options⟩]{⟨label⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

This command always uses the value of the user1 key as the link text.

There are also analogous uppercasing commands:

\Glsuseri \Glsuseri[⟨options⟩]{⟨text⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

\GLSuseri \GLSuseri[⟨options⟩]{⟨text⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

\glsuserii \glsuserii[⟨options⟩]{⟨text⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

This command always uses the value of the user2 key as the link text.

There are also analogous uppercasing commands:

\Glsuserii \Glsuserii[⟨options⟩]{⟨text⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

\GLSuserii \GLSuserii[⟨options⟩]{⟨text⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

\glsuseriii \glsuseriii[⟨options⟩]{⟨text⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

This command always uses the value of the user3 key as the link text.

There are also analogous uppercasing commands:

\Glsuseriii \Glsuseriii[⟨options⟩]{⟨text⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

\GLSuseriii \GLSuseriii[⟨options⟩]{⟨text⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

\glsuseriv \glsuseriv[⟨options⟩]{⟨text⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

This command always uses the value of the user4 key as the link text.

There are also analogous uppercasing commands:

\Glsuseriv \Glsuseriv[⟨options⟩]{⟨text⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

\GLSuseriv \GLSuseriv[⟨options⟩]{⟨text⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

\glsuserv \glsuserv[⟨options⟩]{⟨text⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

This command always uses the value of the user5 key as the link text.

There are also analogous uppercasing commands:

\Glsuserv \Glsuserv[⟨options⟩]{⟨text⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

\GLSuserv \GLSuserv[⟨options⟩]{⟨text⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

\glsuservi \glsuservi[⟨options⟩]{⟨text⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

This command always uses the value of the user6 key as the link text.

There are also analogous uppercasing commands:

\Glsuservi \Glsuservi[⟨options⟩]{⟨text⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

\GLSuservi \GLSuservi[⟨options⟩]{⟨text⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

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### 6.3 Changing the format of the link text

The default format of the link text for the \gls-like commands is governed by6.1:

\glsentryfmt \glsentryfmt

This may be redefined but if you only want the change the display style for a given glossary, then you need to use

\defglsentryfmt \defglsentryfmt[⟨type⟩]{⟨definition⟩}

instead of redefining \glsentryfmt. The optional first argument ⟨type⟩ is the glossary type. This defaults to \glsdefaulttype if omitted. The second argument is the entry format definition.

Note that \glsentryfmt is the default display format for entries. Once the display format has been changed for an individual glossary using \defglsentryfmt, redefining \glsentryfmt won’t have an effect on that glossary, you must instead use \defglsentryfmt again. Note that glossaries that have been identified as lists of acronyms (via the package option acronymlists or the command \DeclareAcronymList, see §2.5 Acronym Options) use \defglsentryfmt to set their display style.

Within the ⟨definition⟩ argument of \defglsentryfmt, or if you want to redefine \glsentryfmt, you may use the following commands:

\glslabel \glslabel

This is the label of the entry being referenced. As from version 4.08, you can also access the glossary entry type using:

\glstype \glstype

This is defined using \edef so the replacement text is the actual glossary type rather than \glsentrytype{\glslabel}.

\glscustomtext \glscustomtext

This is the custom text supplied in \glsdisp. It’s always empty for \gls, \glspl and their upper case variants. (You can use etoolbox’s \ifdefempty to determine if \glscustomtext is empty.)

\glsinsert \glsinsert

The custom text supplied in the final optional argument to \gls, \glspl and their upper case variants.

\glsifplural \glsifplural{⟨true text⟩}{⟨false text⟩}

If \glspl, \Glspl or \GLSpl was used, this command does ⟨true text⟩ otherwise it does ⟨false text⟩.

\glscapscase \glscapscase{⟨no case⟩}{⟨first uc⟩}{⟨all caps⟩}

If \gls, \glspl or \glsdisp were used, this does ⟨no case⟩. If \Gls or \Glspl were used, this does ⟨first uc⟩. If \GLS or \GLSpl were used, this does ⟨all caps⟩.

\glsifhyperon \glsifhyperon{⟨hyper true⟩}{⟨hyper false⟩}

This will do ⟨hyper true⟩ if the hyperlinks are on for the current reference, otherwise it will do ⟨hyper false⟩. The hyperlink may be off even if it wasn’t explicitly switched off with the hyper key or the use of a starred command. It may be off because the hyperref package hasn’t been loaded or because \glsdisablehyper has been used or because the entry is in a glossary type that’s had the hyperlinks switched off (using nohypertypes) or because it’s the first use and the hyperlinks have been suppressed on first use.

Note that \glsifhyper is now deprecated. If you want to know if the command used to reference this entry was used with the star or plus variant, you can use:

\glslinkvar \glslinkvar{⟨unmodified⟩}{⟨star⟩}{⟨plus⟩}

This will do ⟨unmodified⟩ if the unmodified version was used, or will do ⟨star⟩ if the starred version was used, or will do ⟨plus⟩ if the plus version was used. Note that this doesn’t take into account if the hyper key was used to override the default setting, so this command shouldn’t be used to guess whether or not the hyperlink is on for this reference.

Note that you can also use commands such as \ifglsused within the definition of \glsentryfmt (see §14 Unsetting and Resetting Entry Flags).

If you only want to make minor modifications to \glsentryfmt, you can use

\glsgenentryfmt \glsgenentryfmt

This uses the above commands to display just the first, text, plural or firstplural keys (or the custom text) with the insert text appended.

Alternatively, if want to change the entry format for acronyms (defined via \newacronym) you can use:

\glsgenacfmt \glsgenacfmt

This uses the values from the long, short, longplural and shortplural keys, rather than using the text, plural, first and firstplural keys. The first use singular text is obtained via:

\genacrfullformat \genacrfullformat{⟨label⟩}{⟨insert⟩}

instead of from the first key, and the first use plural text is obtained via:

\genplacrfullformat \genplacrfullformat{⟨label⟩}{⟨insert⟩}

instead of from the firstplural key. In both cases, ⟨label⟩ is the entry’s label and ⟨insert⟩ is the insert text provided in the final optional argument of commands like \gls. The default behaviour is to do the long form (or plural long form) followed by ⟨insert⟩ and a space and the short form (or plural short form) in parentheses, where the short form is in the argument of \firstacronymfont. There are also first letter upper case versions:

\Genacrfullformat \Genacrfullformat{⟨label⟩}{⟨insert⟩}

and

\Genplacrfullformat \Genplacrfullformat{⟨label⟩}{⟨insert⟩}

By default these perform a protected expansion on their no-case-change equivalents and then use \makefirstuc to convert the first character to upper case. If there are issues caused by this expansion, you will need to redefine those commands to explicitly use commands like \Glsentrylong (which is what the predefined acronym styles, such as long-short, do). Otherwise, you only need to redefine \genacrfullformat and \genplacrfullformat to change the behaviour of \glsgenacfmt. See §13 Acronyms for further details on changing the style of acronyms.

Note that \glsentryfmt is not used by the \glstext-like commands.

Example 6 (Custom Entry Display in Text)

Suppose you want a glossary of measurements and units, you can use the symbol key to store the unit:

\newglossaryentry{distance}{name=distance,
description={The length between two points},
symbol={km}}

and now suppose you want \gls{distance} to produce “distance (km)” on first use, then you can redefine \glsentryfmt as follows:

\renewcommand*{\glsentryfmt}{%
\glsgenentryfmt
\ifglsused{\glslabel}{}{\space (\glsentrysymbol{\glslabel})}%
}

(Note that I’ve used \glsentrysymbol rather than \glssymbol to avoid nested hyperlinks.)

Note also that all of the link text will be formatted according to \glstextformat (described earlier). So if you do, say:

\renewcommand{\glstextformat}[1]{\textbf{#1}}
\renewcommand*{\glsentryfmt}{%
\glsgenentryfmt
\ifglsused{\glslabel}{}{\space(\glsentrysymbol{\glslabel})}%
}

then \gls{distance} will produce “distance (km)”.

For a complete document, see the sample file sample-entryfmt.tex.

____________________________

Example 7 (Custom Format for Particular Glossary)

Suppose you have created a new glossary called notation and you want to change the way the entry is displayed on first use so that it includes the symbol, you can do:

\defglsentryfmt[notation]{\glsgenentryfmt
\ifglsused{\glslabel}{}{\space
(denoted \glsentrysymbol{\glslabel})}}

Now suppose you have defined an entry as follows:

\newglossaryentry{set}{type=notation,
name=set,
description={A collection of objects},
symbol={$S$}
}

The first time you reference this entry it will be displayed as: “set (denoted S)” (assuming \gls was used).

Alternatively, if you expect all the symbols to be set in math mode, you can do:

\defglsentryfmt[notation]{\glsgenentryfmt
\ifglsused{\glslabel}{}{\space
(denoted $\glsentrysymbol{\glslabel}$)}}

and define entries like this:

\newglossaryentry{set}{type=notation,
name=set,
description={A collection of objects},
symbol={S}
}

____________________________

Remember that if you use the symbol key, you need to use a glossary style that displays the symbol, as many of the styles ignore it.

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### 6.4 Enabling and disabling hyperlinks to glossary entries

If you load the hyperref or html packages prior to loading the glossaries package, the \gls-like and \glstext-like commands will automatically have hyperlinks to the relevant glossary entry, unless the hyper option has been switched off (either explicitly or through implicit means, such as via the nohypertypes package option).

You can disable or enable links using:

\glsdisablehyper \glsdisablehyper

and

\glsenablehyper \glsenablehyper

respectively. The effect can be localised by placing the commands within a group. Note that you should only use \glsenablehyper if the commands \hyperlink and \hypertarget have been defined (for example, by the hyperref package).

You can disable just the first use links using the package option hyperfirst=false. Note that this option only affects the \gls-like commands that recognise the first use flag.

Example 8 (First Use With Hyperlinked Footnote Description)

Suppose I want the first use to have a hyperlink to the description in a footnote instead of hyperlinking to the relevant place in the glossary. First I need to disable the hyperlinks on first use via the package option hyperfirst=false:

\usepackage[hyperfirst=false]{glossaries}

Now I need to redefine \glsentryfmt (see §6.3 Changing the format of the link text):

\renewcommand*{\glsentryfmt}{%
\glsgenentryfmt
\ifglsused{\glslabel}{}{\footnote{\glsentrydesc{\glslabel}}}%
}

Now the first use won’t have hyperlinked text, but will be followed by a footnote. See the sample file sample-FnDesc.tex for a complete document.

____________________________

Note that the hyperfirst option applies to all defined glossaries. It may be that you only want to disable the hyperlinks on first use for glossaries that have a different form on first use. This can be achieved by noting that since the entries that require hyperlinking for all instances have identical first and subsequent text, they can be unset via \glsunsetall (see §14 Unsetting and Resetting Entry Flags) so that the hyperfirst option doesn’t get applied.

Example 9 (Suppressing Hyperlinks on First Use Just For Acronyms)

Suppose I want to suppress the hyperlink on first use for acronyms but not for entries in the main glossary. I can load the glossaries package using:

\usepackage[hyperfirst=false,acronym]{glossaries}

Once all glossary entries have been defined I then do:

\glsunsetall[main]

____________________________

For more complex requirements, you might find it easier to switch off all hyperlinks via \glsdisablehyper and put the hyperlinks (where required) within the definition of \glsentryfmt (see §6.3 Changing the format of the link text) via \glshyperlink (see §9 Using Glossary Terms Without Links).

Example 10 (Only Hyperlink in Text Mode Not Math Mode)

This is a bit of a contrived example, but suppose, for some reason, I only want the \gls-like commands to have hyperlinks when used in text mode, but not in math mode. I can do this by adding the glossary to the list of nohypertypes and redefining \glsentryfmt:

\GlsDeclareNoHyperList{main}
\renewcommand*{\glsentryfmt}{%
\ifmmode
\glsgenentryfmt
\else
\glsifhyperon
{\glsgenentryfmt}% hyperlink already on
{\glshyperlink[\glsgenentryfmt]{\glslabel}}%
\fi
}

Note that this doesn’t affect the \glstext-like commands, which will have the hyperlinks off unless they’re forced on using the plus variant.

See the sample file sample-nomathhyper.tex for a complete document.

____________________________

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## 7. Adding an Entry to the Glossary Without Generating Text

It is possible to add a line to the glossary file without generating any text at that point in the document using:

\glsadd \glsadd[⟨options⟩]{⟨label⟩}

This is similar to the \glstext-like commands, only it doesn’t produce any text (so therefore, there is no hyper key available in ⟨options⟩ but all the other options that can be used with \glstext-like commands can be passed to \glsadd). For example, to add a page range to the glossary number list for the entry whose label is given by set:

\glsadd[format=(]{set}
Lots of text about sets spanning many pages.
\glsadd[format=)]{set}

To add all entries that have been defined, use:

\glsaddall \glsaddall[⟨options⟩]

The optional argument is the same as for \glsadd, except there is also a key types which can be used to specify which glossaries to use. This should be a comma separated list. For example, if you only want to add all the entries belonging to the list of acronyms (specified by the glossary type \acronymtype) and a list of notation (specified by the glossary type notation) then you can do:

\glsaddall[types={\acronymtype,notation}]

Note that \glsadd and \glsaddall add the current location to the number list. In the case of \glsaddall, all entries in the glossary will have the same location in the number list. If you want to use \glsaddall, it’s best to suppress the number list with the nonumberlist package option. (See sections 2.3 and 5.)

There is now a variation of \glsaddall that skips any entries that have already been used:

\glsaddallunused \glsaddallunused[⟨list⟩]

This command uses \glsadd[format=@gobble] which will ignore this location in the number list. The optional argument ⟨list⟩ is a comma-separated list of glossary types. If omitted, it defaults to the list of all defined glossaries.

If you want to use \glsaddallunused, it’s best to place the command at the end of the document to ensure that all the commands you intend to use have already been used. Otherwise you could end up with a spurious comma or dash in the location list.

Example 11 (Dual Entries)

The example file sample-dual.tex makes use of \glsadd to allow for an entry that should appear both in the main glossary and in the list of acronyms. This example sets up the list of acronyms using the acronym package option:

\usepackage[acronym]{glossaries}

A new command is then defined to make it easier to define dual entries:

\newcommand*{\newdualentry}[5][]{%
\newglossaryentry{main-#2}{name={#4},%
text={#3\glsadd{#2}},%
description={#5},%
#1
}%
\newacronym{#2}{#3\glsadd{main-#2}}{#4}%
}

This has the following syntax:

\newdualentry[⟨options⟩]{⟨label⟩}{⟨abbrv⟩}{⟨long⟩}{⟨description⟩}
You can then define a new dual entry:
\newdualentry{svm}% label
{SVM}% abbreviation
{support vector machine}% long form
{Statistical pattern recognition technique}% description

Now you can reference the acronym with \gls{svm} or you can reference the entry in the main glossary with \gls{main-svm}.

____________________________

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## 8. Cross-Referencing Entries

You must use \makeglossaries (Options 2 or 3) or \makenoidxglossaries (Option 1) before defining any terms that cross-reference entries. If any of the terms that you have cross-referenced don’t appear in the glossary, check that you have put \makeglossaries/\makenoidxglossaries before all entry definitions.

There are several ways of cross-referencing entries in the glossary:

1. You can use commands such as \gls in the entries description. For example:
   \newglossaryentry{apple}{name=apple,
   description={firm, round fruit. See also \gls{pear}}}

   Note that with this method, if you don’t use the cross-referenced term in the main part of the document, you will need two runs of makeglossaries:

   latex filename
   makeglossaries filename
   latex filename
   makeglossaries filename
   latex filename

2. As described in §4 Defining Glossary Entries, you can use the see key when you define the entry. For example:
   \newglossaryentry{MaclaurinSeries}{name={Maclaurin
   series},
   description={Series expansion},
   see={TaylorsTheorem}}

   Note that in this case, the entry with the see key will automatically be added to the glossary, but the cross-referenced entry won’t. You therefore need to ensure that you use the cross-referenced term with the commands described in §6 Links to Glossary Entries or §7 Adding an Entry to the Glossary Without Generating Text.

   The “see” tag is produce using \seename, but can be overridden in specific instances using square brackets at the start of the see value. For example:

   \newglossaryentry{MaclaurinSeries}{name={Maclaurin
   series},
   description={Series expansion},
   see=[see also]{TaylorsTheorem}}

   Take care if you want to use the optional argument of commands such as \newacronym or \newterm as the value will need to be grouped. For example:

   \newterm{seal}
   \newterm[see={[see also]seal}]{sea lion}

   Similarly if the value contains a list. For example:

   \glossaryentry{lemon}{
   name={lemon},
   description={Yellow citrus fruit}
   }
   \glossaryentry{lime}
   {
   name={lime},
   description={Green citrus fruit}
   }
   \glossaryentry{citrus}
   {
   name={citrus},
   description={Plant in the Rutaceae family},
   see={lemon,lime}
   }

3. After you have defined the entry, use

   \glssee \glssee[⟨tag⟩]{⟨label⟩}{⟨xr label list⟩}

   where ⟨xr label list⟩ is a comma-separated list of entry labels to be cross-referenced, ⟨label⟩ is the label of the entry doing the cross-referencing and ⟨tag⟩ is the “see” tag. (The default value of ⟨tag⟩ is \seename.) For example:

   \glssee[see also]{series}{FourierSeries,TaylorsTheorem}

   Note that this automatically adds the entry given by ⟨label⟩ to the glossary but doesn’t add the cross-referenced entries (specified by ⟨xr label list⟩) to the glossary.

In both cases 2 and 3 above, the cross-referenced information appears in the number list, whereas in case 1, the cross-referenced information appears in the description. (See the sample-crossref.tex example file that comes with this package.) This means that in cases 2 and 3, the cross-referencing information won’t appear if you have suppressed the number list. In this case, you will need to activate the number list for the given entries using nonumberlist=false. Alternatively, if you just use the see key instead of \glssee, you can automatically activate the number list using the seeautonumberlist package option.

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###

### 8.1 Customising Cross-reference Text

When you use either the see key or the command \glssee, the cross-referencing information will be typeset in the glossary according to:

\glsseeformat \glsseeformat[⟨tag⟩]{⟨label-list⟩}{⟨location⟩}

The default definition of \glsseeformat is:
\emph{⟨tag⟩} \glsseelist{⟨label-list⟩}
Note that the location is always ignored.8.1 For example, if you want the tag to appear in bold, you can do:8.2

\renewcommand*{\glsseeformat}[3][\seename]{\textbf{#1}
\glsseelist{#2}}

The list of labels is dealt with by \glsseelist, which iterates through the list and typesets each entry in the label. The entries are separated by

\glsseesep \glsseesep

or (for the last pair)

\glsseelastsep \glsseelastsep

These default to “,\space” and “\space\andname\space” respectively. The list entry text is displayed using:

\glsseeitemformat \glsseeitemformat{⟨label⟩}

This defaults to \glsentrytext{⟨label⟩}.8.3 For example, to make the cross-referenced list use small caps:

\renewcommand{\glsseeitemformat}[1]{%
\textsc{\glsentrytext{#1}}}

You can use \glsseeformat and \glsseelist in the main body of the text, but they won’t automatically add the cross-referenced entries to the glossary. If you want them added with that location, you can do:
Some information (see also
\glsseelist{FourierSeries,TaylorsTheorem}%
\glsadd{FourierSeries}\glsadd{TaylorsTheorem}).

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## 9. Using Glossary Terms Without Links

The commands described in this section display entry details without adding any information to the glossary. They don’t use \glstextformat, they don’t have any optional arguments, they don’t affect the first use flag and, apart from \glshyperlink, they don’t produce hyperlinks.

Commands that aren’t expandable will be ignored by PDF bookmarks, so you will need to provide an alternative via hyperref’s \texorpdfstring if you want to use them in sectioning commands. (This isn’t specific to the glossaries package.) See the hyperref documentation for further details. All the commands that convert the first letter to upper case aren’t expandable. The other commands depend on whether their corresponding keys were assigned non-expandable values.

If you want each word in a given entry field capitalised, you can use \ecapitalisewords⟨text⟩ defined by the mfirstuc package, but make sure you use one of the expandable commands within ⟨text⟩. For example:

\ecaptialisewords{\glsentrytext{somelabel}}

Note that \ecapitalisewords is not expandable.

\glsentryname \glsentryname{⟨label⟩}

\Glsentryname \Glsentryname{⟨label⟩}

These commands display the name of the glossary entry given by ⟨label⟩, as specified by the name key. \Glsentryname makes the first letter upper case. Neither of these commands check for the existence of ⟨label⟩. The first form \glsentryname is expandable (unless the name contains unexpandable commands). Note that this may be different from the values of the text or first keys. In general it’s better to use \glsentrytext or \glsentryfirst instead of \glsentryname.

In general it’s best to avoid \Glsentryname with acronyms. Instead, consider using \Glsentrylong, \Glsentryshort or \Glsentryfull.

\glossentryname \glossentryname{⟨label⟩}

This is like \glsnamefont{\glsentryname{⟨label⟩}} but also checks for the existence of ⟨label⟩. This command is not expandable. It’s used in the predefined glossary styles, so if you want to change the way the name is formatted in the glossary, you can redefine \glsnamefont to use the required fonts. For example:

\renewcommand*{\glsnamefont}[1]{\textmd{\sffamily #1}}

\Glossentryname \Glossentryname{⟨label⟩}

This is like \glossentryname but makes the first letter of the name upper case.

\glsentrytext \glsentrytext{⟨label⟩}

\Glsentrytext \Glsentrytext{⟨label⟩}

These commands display the subsequent use text for the glossary entry given by ⟨label⟩, as specified by the text key. \Glsentrytext makes the first letter upper case. The first form is expandable (unless the text contains unexpandable commands). The second form is not expandable. Neither checks for the existence of ⟨label⟩.

\glsentryplural \glsentryplural{⟨label⟩}

\Glsentryplural \Glsentryplural{⟨label⟩}

These commands display the subsequent use plural text for the glossary entry given by ⟨label⟩, as specified by the plural key. \Glsentryplural makes the first letter upper case. The first form is expandable (unless the value of that key contains unexpandable commands). The second form is not expandable. Neither checks for the existence of ⟨label⟩.

\glsentryfirst \glsentryfirst{⟨label⟩}

\Glsentryfirst \Glsentryfirst{⟨label⟩}

These commands display the first use text for the glossary entry given by ⟨label⟩, as specified by the first key. \Glsentryfirst makes the first letter upper case. The first form is expandable (unless the value of that key contains unexpandable commands). The second form is not expandable. Neither checks for the existence of ⟨label⟩.

\glsentryfirstplural \glsentryfirstplural{⟨label⟩}

\Glsentryfirstplural \Glsentryfirstplural{⟨label⟩}

These commands display the plural form of the first use text for the glossary entry given by ⟨label⟩, as specified by the firstplural key. \Glsentryfirstplural makes the first letter upper case. The first form is expandable (unless the value of that key contains unexpandable commands). The second form is not expandable. Neither checks for the existence of ⟨label⟩.

\glsentrydesc \glsentrydesc{⟨label⟩}

\Glsentrydesc \Glsentrydesc{⟨label⟩}

These commands display the description for the glossary entry given by ⟨label⟩. \Glsentrydesc makes the first letter upper case. The first form is expandable (unless the value of that key contains unexpandable commands). The second form is not expandable. Neither checks for the existence of ⟨label⟩.

\glossentrydesc \glossentrydesc{⟨label⟩}

This is like \glsentrydesc{⟨label⟩} but also checks for the existence of ⟨label⟩. This command is not expandable. It’s used in the predefined glossary styles to display the description.

\Glossentrydesc \Glossentrydesc{⟨label⟩}

This is like \glossentrydesc but converts the first letter to upper case. This command is not expandable.

\glsentrydescplural \glsentrydescplural{⟨label⟩}

\Glsentrydescplural \Glsentrydescplural{⟨label⟩}

These commands display the plural description for the glossary entry given by ⟨label⟩. \Glsentrydescplural makes the first letter upper case. The first form is expandable (unless the value of that key contains unexpandable commands). The second form is not expandable. Neither checks for the existence of ⟨label⟩.

\glsentrysymbol \glsentrysymbol{⟨label⟩}

\Glsentrysymbol \Glsentrysymbol{⟨label⟩}

These commands display the symbol for the glossary entry given by ⟨label⟩. \Glsentrysymbol makes the first letter upper case. The first form is expandable (unless the value of that key contains unexpandable commands). The second form is not expandable. Neither checks for the existence of ⟨label⟩.

\glsletentryfield \glsletentryfield{⟨cs⟩}{⟨label⟩}{⟨field⟩}

This command doesn’t display anything. It merely fetches the value associated with the given field (where the available field names are listed in table 4.1) and stores the result in the control sequence ⟨cs⟩. For example, to store the description for the entry whose label is “apple” in the control sequence \tmp:

\glsletentryfield{\tmp}{apple}{desc}

\glossentrysymbol \glossentrysymbol{⟨label⟩}

This is like \glsentrysymbol{⟨label⟩} but also checks for the existence of ⟨label⟩. This command is not expandable. It’s used in some of the predefined glossary styles to display the symbol.

\Glossentrysymbol \Glossentrysymbol{⟨label⟩}

This is like \glossentrysymbol but converts the first letter to upper case. This command is not expandable.

\glsentrysymbolplural \glsentrysymbolplural{⟨label⟩}

\Glsentrysymbolplural \Glsentrysymbolplural{⟨label⟩}

These commands display the plural symbol for the glossary entry given by ⟨label⟩. \Glsentrysymbolplural makes the first letter upper case. The first form is expandable (unless the value of that key contains unexpandable commands). The second form is not expandable. Neither checks for the existence of ⟨label⟩.

\glsentryuseri \glsentryuseri{⟨label⟩}

\Glsentryuseri \Glsentryuseri{⟨label⟩}

\glsentryuserii \glsentryuserii{⟨label⟩}

\Glsentryuserii \Glsentryuserii{⟨label⟩}

\glsentryuseriii \glsentryuseriii{⟨label⟩}

\Glsentryuseriii \Glsentryuseriii{⟨label⟩}

\glsentryuseriv \glsentryuseriv{⟨label⟩}

\Glsentryuseriv \Glsentryuseriv{⟨label⟩}

\glsentryuserv \glsentryuserv{⟨label⟩}

\Glsentryuserv \Glsentryuserv{⟨label⟩}

\glsentryuservi \glsentryuservi{⟨label⟩}

\Glsentryuservi \Glsentryuservi{⟨label⟩}

These commands display the value of the user keys for the glossary entry given by ⟨label⟩. The lower case forms are expandable (unless the value of the key contains unexpandable commands). The commands beginning with an upper case letter convert the first letter of the required value to upper case and are not expandable. None of these commands check for the existence of ⟨label⟩.

\glshyperlink \glshyperlink[⟨link text⟩]{⟨label⟩}

This command provides a hyperlink to the glossary entry given by ⟨label⟩ but does not add any information to the glossary file. The link text is given by \glsentrytext{⟨label⟩} by default9.1, but can be overridden using the optional argument. Note that the hyperlink will be suppressed if you have used \glsdisablehyper or if you haven’t loaded the hyperref package.

If you use \glshyperlink, you need to ensure that the relevant entry has been added to the glossary using any of the commands described in §6 Links to Glossary Entries or §7 Adding an Entry to the Glossary Without Generating Text otherwise you will end up with an undefined link.

The next two commands are only available with Option 1 or with the savenumberlist package option:

\glsentrynumberlist \glsentrynumberlist{⟨label⟩}

\glsdisplaynumberlist \glsdisplaynumberlist{⟨label⟩}

Both display the number list for the entry given by ⟨label⟩. When used with Option 1 a rerun is required to ensure this list is up-to-date, when used with Options 2 or 3 a run of makeglossaries (or makeindex/xindy) followed by one or two runs of LA TEX is required.

The first command, \glsentrynumberlist, simply displays the number list as is. The second command, \glsdisplaynumberlist, formats the list using:

\glsnumlistsep \glsnumlistsep

as the separator between all but the last two elements and

\glsnumlistlastsep \glsnumlistlastsep

between the final two elements. The defaults are ,␣ and ␣\&␣, respectively.

\glsdisplaynumberlist is fairly experimental. It works with Option 1, but for Options 2 or 3 it only works when the default counter format is used (that is, when the format key is set to glsnumberformat). This command will only work with hyperref if you choose Option 1. If you try using this command with Options 2 or 3 and hyperref, \glsentrynumberlist will be used instead.

For further information see “Displaying entry details without adding information to the glossary” in the documented code (glossaries-code.pdf).

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## 10. Displaying a glossary

Option 1:

  \printnoidxglossaries \printnoidxglossaries

  (Must be used with \makenoidxglossaries in the preamble.)

Options 2 and 3:

  \printglossaries \printglossaries

  (Must be used with \makeglossaries in the preamble.)

These commands will display all the glossaries in the order in which they were defined. Note that, in the case of Options 2 and 3, no glossaries will appear until you have either used the Perl script makeglossaries or have directly used makeindex or xindy (as described in §1.4 Generating the Associated Glossary Files). If the glossary still does not appear after you re-LA TEX your document, check the makeindex/xindy log files to see if there is a problem. With Option 1, you just need two LA TEX runs to make the glossaries appear, but you may need further runs to make the number lists up-to-date.

An individual glossary can be displayed using:

Option 1:

  \printnoidxglossary \printnoidxglossary[⟨options⟩]

  (Must be used with \makenoidxglossaries in the preamble.)

Options 2 and 3:

  \printglossary \printglossary[⟨options⟩]

  (Must be used with \makeglossaries in the preamble.)

where ⟨options⟩ is a ⟨key⟩=⟨value⟩ list of options. The following keys are available:

type
  The value of this key specifies which glossary to print. If omitted, the default glossary is assumed. For example, to print the list of acronyms:
  \printglossary[type=\acronymtype]

  Note that you can’t display an ignored glossary, so don’t try setting type to the name of a glossary that was defined using \newignoredglossary. (See §12 Defining New Glossaries.)

title
  This is the glossary’s title (overriding the title specified when the glossary was defined).
toctitle
  This is the title to use for the table of contents (if the toc package option has been used). It may also be used for the page header, depending on the page style. If omitted, the value of title is used.
style
  This specifies which glossary style to use for this glossary, overriding the effect of the style package option or \glossarystyle.
numberedsection
  This specifies whether to use a numbered section for this glossary, overriding the effect of the numberedsection package option. This key has the same syntax as the numberedsection package option, described in §2.2 Sectioning, Headings and TOC Options.
nonumberlist
  This is a boolean key. If true (nonumberlist=true) the numberlist is suppressed for this glossary. If false (nonumberlist=false) the numberlist is displayed for this glossary.
nogroupskip
  This is a boolean key. If true the vertical gap between groups is suppressed for this glossary.
nopostdot
  This is a boolean key. If true the full stop after the description is suppressed for this glossary.
entrycounter
  This is a boolean key. Behaves similar to the package option of the same name. The corresponding package option must be used to make \glsrefentry work correctly.
subentrycounter
  This is a boolean key. Behaves similar to the package option of the same name. If you want to set both entrycounter and subentrycounter, make sure you specify entrycounter first. The corresponding package option must be used to make \glsrefentry work correctly.
sort
  This key is only available for Option 1. Possible values are: word (word order), letter (letter order), standard (word or letter ordering taken from the order package option), use (order of use), def (order of definition) nocase (case-insensitive) or case (case-sensitive).

  The word and letter order sort methods use datatool’s \dtlwordindexcompare and \dtlletterindexcompare handlers. The case-insensitive sort method uses datatool’s \dtlicompare handler. The case-sensitive sort method uses datatool’s \dtlcompare handler. See the datatool documentation for further details.

  If you don’t get an error with sort=use and sort=def but you do get an error with one of the other sort options, then you probably need to use the sanitizesort=true package option or make sure none of the entries have fragile commands in their sort field.

By default, the glossary is started either by \chapter* or by \section*, depending on whether or not \chapter is defined. This can be overridden by the section package option or the \setglossarysection command. Numbered sectional units can be obtained using the numberedsection package option. Each glossary sets the page header via the command

\glsglossarymark \glsglossarymark{⟨title⟩}

If this mechanism is unsuitable for your chosen class file or page style package, you will need to redefine \glsglossarymark. Further information about these options and commands is given in §2.2 Sectioning, Headings and TOC Options.

Information can be added to the start of the glossary (after the title and before the main body of the glossary) by redefining

\glossarypreamble \glossarypreamble

For example:

\renewcommand{\glossarypreamble}{Numbers in italic
indicate primary definitions.}

This needs to be done before the glossary is displayed.

If you want a different preamble per glossary you can use

\setglossarypreamble \setglossarypreamble[⟨type⟩]{⟨preamble text⟩}

If ⟨type⟩ is omitted, \glsdefaulttype is used.

For example:

\setglossarypreamble{Numbers in italic
indicate primary definitions.}

This will print the given preamble text for the main glossary, but not have any preamble text for any other glossaries.

There is an analogous command to \glossarypreamble called

\glossarypostamble \glossarypostamble

which is placed at the end of each glossary.

Example 12 (Switch to Two Column Mode for Glossary)

Suppose you are using the superheaderborder style10.1, and you want the glossary to be in two columns, but after the glossary you want to switch back to one column mode, you could do:

\renewcommand*{\glossarysection}[2][]{%
\twocolumn[{\chapter*{#2}}]%
\setlength\glsdescwidth{0.6\linewidth}%
\glsglossarymark{\glossarytoctitle}%
}
\renewcommand*{\glossarypostamble}{\onecolumn}

____________________________

Within each glossary, each entry name is formatted according to

\glsnamefont \glsnamefont{⟨name⟩}

which takes one argument: the entry name. This command is always used regardless of the glossary style. By default, \glsnamefont simply displays its argument in whatever the surrounding font happens to be. This means that in the list-like glossary styles (defined in the glossary-list style file) the name will appear in bold, since the name is placed in the optional argument of \item, whereas in the tabular styles (defined in the glossary-long and glossary-super style files) the name will appear in the normal font. The hierarchical glossary styles (defined in the glossary-tree style file) also set the name in bold.

Example 13 (Changing the Font Used to Display Entry Names in the Glossary)

Suppose you want all the entry names to appear in medium weight small caps in your glossaries, then you can do:

\renewcommand{\glsnamefont}[1]{\textsc{\mdseries #1}}

____________________________

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## 11. Xindy (Option 3)

If you want to use xindy to sort the glossary, you must use the package option xindy:

\usepackage[xindy]{glossaries}

This ensures that the glossary information is written in xindy syntax.

§1.4 Generating the Associated Glossary Files covers how to use the external indexing application. This section covers the commands provided by the glossaries package that allow you to adjust the xindy style file (.xdy) and parameters.

To assist writing information to the xindy style file, the glossaries package provides the following commands:

\glsopenbrace \glsopenbrace

\glsclosebrace \glsclosebrace

which produce an open and closing brace. (This is needed because \{ and \} don’t expand to a simple brace character when written to a file.) Similarly, you can write a percent character using:

\glspercentchar \glspercentchar

and a tilde character using:

\glstildechar \glstildechar

For example, a newline character is specified in a xindy style file using ~n so you can use \glstildechar n to write this correctly (or you can do \string~n). A backslash can be written to a file using

\glsbackslash \glsbackslash

In addition, if you are using a package that makes the double quote character active (e.g. ngerman) you can use:

\glsquote \glsquote{⟨text⟩}

which will produce "⟨text⟩". Alternatively, you can use \string" to write the double-quote character. This document assumes that the double quote character has not been made active, so the examples just use " for clarity.

If you want greater control over the xindy style file than is available through the LA TEX commands provided by the glossaries package, you will need to edit the xindy style file. In which case, you must use \noist to prevent the style file from being overwritten by the glossaries package. For additional information about xindy, read the xindy documentation. I’m sorry I can’t provide any assistance with writing xindy style files. If you need help, I recommend you ask on the xindy mailing list (http://xindy.sourceforge.net/mailing-list.html).

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###

### 11.1 Language and Encodings

When you use xindy, you need to specify the language and encoding used (unless you have written your own custom xindy style file that defines the relevant alphabet and sort rules). If you use makeglossaries, this information is obtained from the document’s auxiliary (.aux) file. The makeglossaries script attempts to find the root language given your document settings, but in the event that it gets it wrong or if xindy doesn’t support that language, then you can specify the required language using:

\GlsSetXdyLanguage \GlsSetXdyLanguage[⟨glossary type⟩]{⟨language⟩}

where ⟨language⟩ is the name of the language. The optional argument can be used if you have multiple glossaries in different languages. If ⟨glossary type⟩ is omitted, it will be applied to all glossaries, otherwise the language setting will only be applied to the glossary given by ⟨glossary type⟩.

If the inputenc package is used, the encoding will be obtained from the value of \inputencodingname. Alternatively, you can specify the encoding using:

\GlsSetXdyCodePage \GlsSetXdyCodePage{⟨code⟩}

where ⟨code⟩ is the name of the encoding. For example:

\GlsSetXdyCodePage{utf8}

Note that you can also specify the language and encoding using the package option xindy={language=⟨lang⟩,codepage=⟨code⟩}. For example:

\usepackage[xindy={language=english,codepage=utf8}]{glossaries}

If you write your own custom xindy style file that includes the language settings, you need to set the language to nothing:

\GlsSetXdyLanguage{}

(and remember to use \noist to prevent the style file from being overwritten).

The commands \GlsSetXdyLanguage and \GlsSetXdyCodePage have no effect if you don’t use makeglossaries. If you call xindy without makeglossaries you need to remember to set the language and encoding using the -L and -C switches.

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###

### 11.2 Locations and Number lists

If you use xindy, the glossaries package needs to know which counters you will be using in the number list in order to correctly format the xindy style file. Counters specified using the counter package option or the ⟨counter⟩ option of \newglossary are automatically taken care of, but if you plan to use a different counter in the counter key for commands like \glslink, then you need to identify these counters before \makeglossaries using:

\GlsAddXdyCounters \GlsAddXdyCounters{⟨counter list⟩}

where ⟨counter list⟩ is a comma-separated list of counter names.

The most likely attributes used in the format key (textrm, hyperrm etc) are automatically added to the xindy style file, but if you want to use another attribute, you need to add it using:

\GlsAddXdyAttribute \GlsAddXdyAttribute{⟨name⟩}

where ⟨name⟩ is the name of the attribute, as used in the format key.

Example 14 (Custom Font for Displaying a Location)

Suppose I want a bold, italic, hyperlinked location. I first need to define a command that will do this:

\newcommand*{\hyperbfit}[1]{\textit{\hyperbf{#1}}}

but with xindy, I also need to add this as an allowed attribute:

\GlsAddXdyAttribute{hyperbfit}

Now I can use it in the optional argument of commands like \gls:

Here is a \gls[format=hyperbfit]{sample} entry.

(where sample is the label of the required entry).

____________________________

Note that \GlsAddXdyAttribute has no effect if \noist is used or if \makeglossaries is omitted. \GlsAddXdyAttribute must be used before \makeglossaries. Additionally, \GlsAddXdyCounters must come before \GlsAddXdyAttribute.

If the location numbers include formatting commands, then you need to add a location style in the appropriate format using

\GlsAddXdyLocation \GlsAddXdyLocation[⟨prefix-location⟩]{⟨name⟩}{⟨definition⟩}

where ⟨name⟩ is the name of the format and ⟨definition⟩ is the xindy definition. The optional argument ⟨prefix-location⟩ is needed if \theH⟨counter⟩ either isn’t defined or is different from \the⟨counter⟩. (See also \glsaddprotectedpagefmt described in §5 Number lists.)

Note that \GlsAddXdyLocation has no effect if \noist is used or if \makeglossaries is omitted. \GlsAddXdyLocation must be used before \makeglossaries.

Example 15 (Custom Numbering System for Locations)

Suppose I decide to use a somewhat eccentric numbering system for sections where I redefine \thesection as follows:

\renewcommand*{\thesection}{[\thechapter]\arabic{section}}

If I haven’t done counter=section in the package option, I need to specify that the counter will be used as a location number:

\GlsAddXdyCounters{section}

Next I need to add the location style (\thechapter is assumed to be the standard \arabic{chapter}):

\GlsAddXdyLocation{section}{:sep "[" "arabic-numbers" :sep "]"
"arabic-numbers"
}

Note that if I have further decided to use the hyperref package and want to redefine \theHsection as:

\renewcommand*{\theHsection}{\thepart.\thesection}
\renewcommand*{\thepart}{\Roman{part}}

then I need to modify the \GlsAddXdyLocation code above to:

\GlsAddXdyLocation["roman-numbers-uppercase"]{section}{:sep "["
"arabic-numbers" :sep "]" "arabic-numbers"
}

Since \Roman will result in an empty string if the counter is zero, it’s a good idea to add an extra location to catch this:

\GlsAddXdyLocation{zero.section}{:sep "["
"arabic-numbers" :sep "]" "arabic-numbers"
}

This example is illustrated in the sample file samplexdy2.tex.

____________________________

Example 16 (Locations as Words not Digits)

Suppose I want the page numbers written as words rather than digits and I use the fmtcount package to do this. I can redefine \thepage as follows:

\renewcommand*{\thepage}{\Numberstring{page}}

This gets expanded to \protect \Numberstringnum {⟨n⟩} where ⟨n⟩ is the Arabic page number. This means that I need to define a new location that has that form:

\GlsAddXdyLocation{Numberstring}{:sep "\string\protect\space
\string\Numberstringnum\space\glsopenbrace"
"arabic-numbers" :sep "\glsclosebrace"}

Note that it’s necessary to use \space to indicate that spaces also appear in the format, since, unlike TEX, xindy doesn’t ignore spaces after control sequences.

Note that \GlsAddXdyLocation{⟨name⟩}{⟨definition⟩} will define commands in the form:

\glsX⟨counter⟩X⟨name⟩{⟨Hprefix⟩}{⟨location⟩}

for each counter that has been identified either by the counter package option, the ⟨counter⟩ option for \newglossary or in the argument of \GlsAddXdyCounters.

The first argument ⟨Hprefix⟩ is only relevant when used with the hyperref package and indicates that \the⟨Hcounter⟩ is given by \Hprefix.\the⟨counter⟩. The sample file samplexdy.tex, which comes with the glossaries package, uses the default page counter for locations, and it uses the default \glsnumberformat and a custom \hyperbfit format. A new xindy location called Numberstring, as illustrated above, is defined to make the page numbers appear as “One”, “Two”, etc. In order for the location numbers to hyperlink to the relevant pages, I need to redefine the necessary \glsX⟨counter⟩X⟨format⟩ commands:

\renewcommand{\glsXpageXglsnumberformat}[2]{%
\linkpagenumber#2%
}
\renewcommand{\glsXpageXhyperbfit}[2]{%
\textbf{\em\linkpagenumber#2}%
}
\newcommand{\linkpagenumber}[3]{\hyperlink{page.#3}{#1#2{#3}}}

____________________________

In the number list, the locations are sorted according to type. The default ordering is: roman-page-numbers (e.g. i), arabic-page-numbers (e.g. 1), arabic-section-numbers (e.g. 1.1 if the compositor is a full stop or 1-1 if the compositor is a hyphen11.1), alpha-page-numbers (e.g. a), Roman-page-numbers (e.g. I), Alpha-page-numbers (e.g. A), Appendix-page-numbers (e.g. A.1 if the Alpha compositor is a full stop or A-1 if the Alpha compositor is a hyphen11.2), user defined location names (as specified by \GlsAddXdyLocation in the order in which they were defined), see (cross-referenced entries). This ordering can be changed using:

\GlsSetXdyLocationClassOrder

\GlsSetXdyLocationClassOrder{⟨location names⟩}

where each location name is delimited by double quote marks and separated by white space. For example:

\GlsSetXdyLocationClassOrder{
"arabic-page-numbers"
"arabic-section-numbers"
"roman-page-numbers"
"Roman-page-numbers"
"alpha-page-numbers"
"Alpha-page-numbers"
"Appendix-page-numbers"
"see"
}

Note that \GlsSetXdyLocationClassOrder has no effect if \noist is used or if \makeglossaries is omitted. \GlsSetXdyLocationClassOrder must be used before \makeglossaries.

If a number list consists of a sequence of consecutive numbers, the range will be concatenated. The number of consecutive locations that causes a range formation defaults to 2, but can be changed using:

\GlsSetXdyMinRangeLength

\GlsSetXdyMinRangeLength{⟨n⟩}

For example:

\GlsSetXdyMinRangeLength{3}

The argument may also be the keyword none, to indicate that there should be no range formations. See the xindy manual for further details on range formations.

Note that \GlsSetXdyMinRangeLength has no effect if \noist is used or if \makeglossaries is omitted. \GlsSetXdyMinRangeLength must be used before \makeglossaries.

See §5 Number lists for further details.

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###

### 11.3 Glossary Groups

The glossary is divided into groups according to the first letter of the sort key. The glossaries package also adds a number group by default, unless you suppress it in the xindy package option. For example:

\usepackage[xindy={glsnumbers=false}]{glossaries}

Any entry that doesn’t go in one of the letter groups or the number group is placed in the default group.

If you have a number group, the default behaviour is to locate it before the “A” letter group. If you are not using a Roman alphabet, you can change this using:

\GlsSetXdyFirstLetterAfterDigits

\GlsSetXdyFirstLetterAfterDigits{⟨letter⟩}

Note that \GlsSetXdyFirstLetterAfterDigits has no effect if \noist is used or if \makeglossaries is omitted. \GlsSetXdyFirstLetterAfterDigits must be used before \makeglossaries.

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## 12. Defining New Glossaries

A new glossary can be defined using:

\newglossary \newglossary[⟨log-ext⟩]{⟨name⟩}{⟨in-ext⟩}{⟨out-ext⟩}{⟨title⟩} [⟨counter⟩]

where ⟨name⟩ is the label to assign to this glossary. The arguments ⟨in-ext⟩ and ⟨out-ext⟩ specify the extensions to give to the input and output files for that glossary, ⟨title⟩ is the default title for this new glossary and the final optional argument ⟨counter⟩ specifies which counter to use for the associated number lists (see also §5 Number lists). The first optional argument specifies the extension for the makeindex (Option 2) or xindy (Option 3) transcript file (this information is only used by makeglossaries which picks up the information from the auxiliary file). If you use Option 1, the ⟨log-ext⟩, ⟨in-ext⟩ and ⟨out-ext⟩ arguments are ignored.

The glossary label ⟨name⟩ must not contain any active characters. It’s generally best to stick with just characters that have category code 11 (typically the non-extended Latin characters for standard LA TEX).

There is also a starred version (new to v4.08):

\newglossary* \newglossary*{⟨name⟩}{⟨title⟩}[⟨counter⟩]

which is equivalent to

\newglossary[⟨name⟩-glg]{⟨name⟩}{⟨name⟩-gls}{⟨name⟩-glo}{⟨title⟩}[⟨counter⟩]
or you can also use:

\altnewglossary \altnewglossary{⟨name⟩}{⟨tag⟩}{⟨title⟩}[⟨counter⟩]

which is equivalent to

\newglossary[⟨tag⟩-glg]{⟨name⟩}{⟨tag⟩-gls}{⟨tag⟩-glo}{⟨title⟩}[⟨counter⟩]

It may be that you have some terms or acronyms that are so common that they don’t need to be listed. In this case, you can define a special type of glossary that doesn’t create any associated files. This is referred to as an “ignored glossary” and it’s ignored by commands that iterate over all the glossaries, such as \printglossaries. To define an ignored glossary, use

\newignoredglossary \newignoredglossary{⟨name⟩}

where ⟨name⟩ is the name of the glossary (as above). This glossary type will automatically be added to the nohypertypes list, since there are no hypertargets for the entries in an ignored glossary. (The sample file sample-entryfmt.tex defines an ignored glossary.)

You can test if a glossary is an ignored one using:

\ifignoredglossary \ifignoredglossary{⟨name⟩}{⟨true⟩}{⟨false⟩}

This does ⟨true⟩ if ⟨name⟩ was defined as an ignored glossary, otherwise it does ⟨false⟩.

Note that the main (default) glossary is automatically created as:

\newglossary{main}{gls}{glo}{\glossaryname}

so it can be identified by the label main (unless the nomain package option is used). Using the acronym package option is equivalent to:

\newglossary[alg]{acronym}{acr}{acn}{\acronymname}

so it can be identified by the label acronym. If you are not sure whether the acronym option has been used, you can identify the list of acronyms by the command \acronymtype \acronymtype which is set to acronym, if the acronym option has been used, otherwise it is set to main. Note that if you are using the main glossary as your list of acronyms, you need to declare it as a list of acronyms using the package option acronymlists.

The symbols package option creates a new glossary with the label symbols using:

\newglossary[slg]{symbols}{sls}{slo}{\glssymbolsgroupname}

The numbers package option creates a new glossary with the label numbers using:

\newglossary[nlg]{numbers}{nls}{nlo}{\glsnumbersgroupname}

The index package option creates a new glossary with the label index using:

\newglossary[ilg]{index}{ind}{idx}{\indexname}

Options 2 and 3: all glossaries must be defined before \makeglossaries to ensure that the relevant output files are opened.

See §1.3.1 Changing the Fixed Names if you want to redefine \glossaryname, especially if you are using babel or translator. (Similarly for \glssymbolsgroupname and \glsnumbersgroupname.) If you want to redefine \indexname, just follow the advice in How to change LaTeX’s “fixed names”.

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## 13. Acronyms

Note that although this chapter uses the term “acronym”, you can also use the commands described here for abbreviations or contractions (as in the case of some of the examples given below). If the glossary title is no longer applicable (for example, it should be “Abbreviations” rather than “Acronyms”) then you can change the title either by redefining \acronymname (see §1.3 Multi-Lingual Support) or by using the title in the optional argument of \printglossary (or \printacronym).

You may have noticed in §4 Defining Glossary Entries that when you specify a new entry, you can specify alternate text to use when the term is first used in the document. This provides a useful means to define acronyms. For convenience, the glossaries package defines the command:

\newacronym \newacronym[⟨key-val list⟩]{⟨label⟩}{⟨abbrv⟩}{⟨long⟩}

This uses \newglossaryentry to create an entry with the given label in the glossary given by \acronymtype. You can specify a different glossary using the type key within the optional argument. The \newacronym command also uses the long, longplural, short and shortplural keys in \newglossaryentry to store the long and abbreviated forms and their plurals.

If you haven’t identified the specified glossary type as a list of acronyms (via the package option acronymlists or the command \DeclareAcronymList, see §2.5 Acronym Options) \newacronym will add it to the list and reset the display style for that glossary via \defglsentryfmt. If you have a mixture of acronyms and regular entries within the same glossary, care is needed if you want to change the display style: you must first identify that glossary as a list of acronyms and then use \defglsentryfmt (not redefine \glsentryfmt) before defining your entries.

The optional argument {⟨key-val list⟩} allows you to specify keys such as description (when used with one of the styles that require a description, described in §13.1 Changing the Acronym Style) or you can override plural forms of ⟨abbrv⟩ or ⟨long⟩ using the shortplural or longplural keys. For example:

\newacronym[longplural={diagonal matrices}]%
{dm}{DM}{diagonal matrix}

If the first use uses the plural form, \glspl{dm} will display: diagonal matrices (DMs). If you want to use the longplural or shortplural keys, I recommend you use \setacronymstyle to set the display style rather than using one of the pre-version 4.02 acronym styles.

Since \newacronym uses \newglossaryentry, you can use commands like \gls and \glsreset as with any other glossary entry.

Since \newacronym sets type=\acronymtype, if you want to load a file containing acronym definitions using \loadglsentries[⟨type⟩]{⟨filename⟩}, the optional argument ⟨type⟩ will not have an effect unless you explicitly set the type as type=\glsdefaulttype in the optional argument to \newacronym. See §4.6 Loading Entries From a File.

Example 17 (Defining an Acronym)

The following defines the acronym IDN:

\newacronym{idn}{IDN}{identification number}

\gls{idn} will produce “identification number (IDN)” on first use and “IDN” on subsequent uses. If you want to use one of the smallcaps acronym styles, described in §13.1 Changing the Acronym Style, you need to use lower case characters for the shortened form:

\newacronym{idn}{idn}{identification number}

Now \gls{idn} will produce “identification number (i d n)” on first use and “i d n” on subsequent uses.

____________________________

The commands described below are similar to the \glstext-like commands in that they don’t modify the first use flag. However, their display is governed by \defentryfmt with \glscustomtext set as appropriate. All caveats that apply to the \glstext-like commands also apply to the following commands.

The optional arguments are the same as those for the \glstext-like commands, and there are similar star and plus variants that switch off or on the hyperlinks. As with the \glstext-like commands, the link text is placed in the argument of \glstextformat.

\acrshort \acrshort[⟨options⟩]{⟨label⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

This sets the link text to the short form (within the argument of \acronymfont) for the entry given by ⟨label⟩. The short form is as supplied by the short key, which \newacronym implicitly sets.

There are also analogous upper case variants:

\Acrshort \Acrshort[⟨options⟩]{⟨label⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

\ACRshort \ACRshort[⟨options⟩]{⟨label⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

There are also plural versions:

\acrshortpl \acrshortpl[⟨options⟩]{⟨label⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

\Acrshortpl \Acrshortpl[⟨options⟩]{⟨label⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

\ACRshortpl \ACRshortpl[⟨options⟩]{⟨label⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

The short plural form is as supplied by the shortplural key, which \newacronym implicitly sets.

\acrlong \acrlong[⟨options⟩]{⟨label⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

This sets the link text to the long form for the entry given by ⟨label⟩. The long form is as supplied by the long key, which \newacronym implicitly sets.

There are also analogous upper case variants:

\Acrlong \Acrlong[⟨options⟩]{⟨label⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

\ACRlong \ACRlong[⟨options⟩]{⟨label⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

Again there are also plural versions:

\acrlongpl \acrlongpl[⟨options⟩]{⟨label⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

\Acrlongpl \Acrlongpl[⟨options⟩]{⟨label⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

\ACRlongpl \ACRlongpl[⟨options⟩]{⟨label⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

The long plural form is as supplied by the longplural key, which \newacronym implicitly sets.

The commands below display the full form of the acronym, but note that this isn’t necessarily the same as the form used on first use. These full-form commands are shortcuts that use the above commands, rather than creating the link text from the complete full form. These full-form commands have star and plus variants and optional arguments that are passed to the above commands.

\acrfull \acrfull[⟨options⟩]{⟨label⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

This is a shortcut for

\acrfullfmt \acrfullfmt{⟨options⟩}{⟨label⟩}{⟨insert⟩}

which by default does

\acrfullformat
{\acrlong[⟨options⟩]{⟨label⟩}{⟨insert⟩}}
{\acrshort[⟨options⟩]{⟨label⟩}}
where

\acrfullformat \acrfullformat{⟨long⟩}{⟨short⟩}

by default does ⟨long⟩ (⟨short⟩). (For further details of these format commands see the documented code, glossaries-code.pdf.)

There are also analogous upper case variants:

\Acrfull \Acrfull[⟨options⟩]{⟨label⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

\ACRfull \ACRfull[⟨options⟩]{⟨label⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

and plural versions:

\acrfullpl \acrfullpl[⟨options⟩]{⟨label⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

\Acrfullpl \Acrfullpl[⟨options⟩]{⟨label⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

\ACRfullpl \ACRfullpl[⟨options⟩]{⟨label⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

If you find the above commands too cumbersome to write, you can use the shortcuts package option to activate the shorter command names listed in table 13.1.

Table 13.1: Synonyms provided by the package option shortcuts

Shortcut Command | Equivalent Command
\acs | \acrshort
\Acs | \Acrshort
\acsp | \acrshortpl
\Acsp | \Acrshortpl
\acl | \acrlong
\Acl | \Acrlong
\aclp | \acrlongpl
\Aclp | \Acrlongpl
\acf | \acrfull
\Acf | \Acrfull
\acfp | \acrfullpl
\Acfp | \Acrfullpl
\ac | \gls
\Ac | \Gls
\acp | \glspl
\Acp | \Glspl

It is also possible to access the long and short forms without adding information to the glossary using commands analogous to \glsentrytext (described in §9 Using Glossary Terms Without Links).

The commands that convert the first letter to upper case come with the same caveats as those for analogous commands like \Glsentrytext (non-expandable, can’t be used in PDF bookmarks, care needs to be taken if the first letter is an accented character etc). See §9 Using Glossary Terms Without Links.

The long form can be accessed using:

\glsentrylong \glsentrylong{⟨label⟩}

or, with the first letter converted to upper case:

\Glsentrylong \Glsentrylong{⟨label⟩}

Plural forms:

\glsentrylongpl \glsentrylongpl{⟨label⟩}

\Glsentrylongpl \Glsentrylongpl{⟨label⟩}

Similarly, to access the short form:

\glsentryshort \glsentryshort{⟨label⟩}

or, with the first letter converted to upper case:

\Glsentryshort \Glsentryshort{⟨label⟩}

Plural forms:

\glsentryshortpl \glsentryshortpl{⟨label⟩}

\Glsentryshortpl \Glsentryshortpl{⟨label⟩}

And the full form can be obtained using:

\glsentryfull \glsentryfull{⟨label⟩}

\Glsentryfull \Glsentryfull{⟨label⟩}

\glsentryfullpl \glsentryfullpl{⟨label⟩}

\Glsentryfullpl \Glsentryfullpl{⟨label⟩}

These again use \acrfullformat by default, but the format may be redefined by the acronym style.

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### 13.1 Changing the Acronym Style

It may be that the default style doesn’t suit your requirements in which case you can switch to another styles using

\setacronymstyle \setacronymstyle{⟨style name⟩}

where ⟨style name⟩ is the name of the required style.

You must use \setacronymstyle before you define the acronyms with \newacronym. If you have multiple glossaries representing lists of acronyms, you must use \setacronymstyle after using \DeclareAcronymList.

Note that unlike the default behaviour of \newacronym, the styles used via \setacronymstyle don’t use the first or text keys, but instead they use \defglsentryfmt to set a custom format that uses the long and short keys (or their plural equivalents). This means that these styles cope better with plurals that aren’t formed by simply appending the singular form with the letter “s”. In fact, most of the predefined styles use \glsgenacfmt and modify the definitions of commands like \genacrfullformat.

Note that when you use \setacronymstyle the name key is set to

\acronymentry \acronymentry{⟨label⟩}

and the sort key is set to

\acronymsort \acronymsort{⟨short⟩}{⟨long⟩}

These commands are redefined by the acronym styles. However, you can redefine them again after the style has been set but before you use \newacronym. Protected expansion is performed on \acronymsort when the entry is defined.

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####

#### 13.1.1 Predefined Acronym Styles

The glossaries package provides a number of predefined styles. These styles apply

\firstacronymfont \firstacronymfont{⟨text⟩}

to the short form on first use and

\acronymfont \acronymfont{⟨text⟩}

on subsequent use. The styles modify the definition of \acronymfont as required, but \firstacronymfont is only set once by the package when it’s loaded. By default \firstacronymfont{⟨text⟩} is the same as \acronymfont{⟨text⟩}. If you want the short form displayed differently on first use, you can redefine \firstacronymfont independently of the acronym style.

The predefined styles that contain sc in their name (for example long-sc-short) redefine \acronymfont to use \textsc, which means that the short form needs to be specified in lower case.

Some fonts don’t support bold smallcaps, so you may need to redefine \glsnamefont (see §10 Displaying a glossary) to switch to medium weight if you are using a glossary style that displays entry names in bold and you have chosen an acronym style that uses \textsc.

The predefined styles that contain sm in their name (for example long-sm-short) redefine \acronymfont to use \textsmaller.

Note that the glossaries package doesn’t define or load any package that defines \textsmaller. If you use one of the acronym styles that set \acronymfont to \textsmaller you must explicitly load the relsize package or otherwise define \textsmaller.

The remaining predefined styles redefine \acronymfont{⟨text⟩} to simply do its argument ⟨text⟩.

In most cases, the predefined styles adjust \acrfull and \glsentryfull (and their plural and upper case variants) to reflect the style. The only exceptions to this are the dua and footnote styles (and their variants).

The following styles are supplied by the glossaries package:

- long-short, long-sc-short, long-sm-short:

  With these three styles, acronyms are displayed in the form

  ⟨long⟩ (\firstacronymfont{⟨short⟩})

  on first use and

  \acronymfont{⟨short⟩}

  on subsequent use. They also set \acronymsort{⟨short⟩}{⟨long⟩} to just ⟨short⟩. This means that the acronyms are sorted according to their short form. In addition, \acronymentry{⟨label⟩} is set to just the short form (enclosed in \acronymfont) and the description key is set to the long form.

- short-long, sc-short-long, sm-short-long:

  These three styles are analogous to the above three styles, except the display order is swapped to

  \firstacronymfont{⟨short⟩} (⟨long⟩)

  on first use.

  Note, however, that \acronymsort and \acronymentry are the same as for the ⟨long⟩ (⟨short⟩) styles above, so the acronyms are still sorted according to the short form.

- long-short-desc, long-sc-short-desc, long-sm-short-desc:

  These are like the long-short, long-sc-short and long-sm-short styles described above, except that the description key must be supplied in the optional argument of \newacronym. They also redefine \acronymentry to {⟨long⟩} (\acronymfont{⟨short⟩}) and redefine \acronymsort{⟨short⟩}{⟨long⟩} to just ⟨long⟩. This means that the acronyms are sorted according to the long form, and in the list of acronyms the name field has the long form followed by the short form in parentheses. I recommend you use a glossary style such as altlist with these acronym styles to allow for the long name field.

- short-long-desc, sc-short-long-desc, sm-short-long-desc:

  These styles are analogous to the above three styles, but the first use display style is:

  \firstacronymfont{⟨short⟩} (⟨long⟩)

  The definitions of \acronymsort and \acronymentry are the same as those for long-short-desc etc.

- dua, dua-desc:

  With these styles, the \gls-like commands always display the long form regardless of whether the entry has been used or not. However, \acrfull and \glsentryfull will display ⟨long⟩ (\acronymfont{⟨short⟩}). In the case of dua, the name and sort keys are set to the short form and the description is set to the long form. In the case of dua-desc, the name and sort keys are set to the long form and the description is supplied in the optional argument of \newacronym.

- footnote, footnote-sc, footnote-sm:

  With these three styles, on first use the \gls-like commands display:

  \firstacronymfont{⟨short⟩}\footnote{⟨long⟩}

  However, \acrfull and \glsentryfull are set to \acronymfont{⟨short⟩} (⟨long⟩). On subsequent use the display is:

  \acronymfont{⟨short⟩}

  The sort and name keys are set to the short form, and the description is set to the long form.

  In order to avoid nested hyperlinks on first use the footnote styles automatically implement hyperfirst=false for the acronym lists.

- footnote-desc, footnote-sc-desc, footnote-sm-desc:

  These three styles are similar to the previous three styles, but the description has to be supplied in the optional argument of \newacronym. The name key is set to the long form followed by the short form in parentheses and the sort key is set to the long form. This means that the acronyms will be sorted according to the long form. In addition, since the name will typically be quite wide it’s best to choose a glossary style that can accommodate this, such as altlist.

Example 18 (Adapting a Predefined Acronym Style)

Suppose I want to use the footnote-sc-desc style, but I want the name key set to the short form followed by the long form in parentheses and the sort key set to the short form. Then I need to specify the footnote-sc-desc style:

\setacronymstyle{footnote-sc-desc}

and then redefine \acronymsort and \acronymentry:

\renewcommand*{\acronymsort}[2]{#1}% sort by short form
\renewcommand*{\acronymentry}[1]{%
\acronymfont{\glsentryshort{#1}}\space (\glsentrylong{#1})}%

(I’ve used \space for extra clarity, but you can just use an actual space instead.)

Since the default Computer Modern fonts don’t support bold smallcaps, I’m also going to redefine \acronymfont so that it always switches to medium weight to ensure the smallcaps setting is used:

\renewcommand*{\acronymfont}[1]{\textmd{\scshape #1}}

This isn’t necessary if you use a font that supports bold smallcaps.

The sample file sampleFnAcrDesc.tex illustrates this example.

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####

#### 13.1.2 Defining A Custom Acronym Style

You may find that the predefined acronyms styles that come with the glossaries package don’t suit your requirements. In this case you can define your own style using:

\newacronymstyle \newacronymstyle{⟨style name⟩}{⟨display⟩}{⟨definitions⟩}

where ⟨style name⟩ is the name of the new style (avoid active characters). The second argument, ⟨display⟩, is equivalent to the mandatory argument of \defglsentryfmt. You can simply use \glsgenacfmt or you can customize the display using commands like \ifglsused, \glsifplural and \glscapscase. (See §6.3 Changing the format of the link text for further details.) If the style is likely to be used with a mixed glossary (that is entries in that glossary are defined both with \newacronym and \newglossaryentry) then you can test if the entry is an acronym and use \glsgenacfmt if it is or \glsgenentryfmt if it isn’t. For example, the long-short style sets ⟨display⟩ as

\ifglshaslong{\glslabel}{\glsgenacfmt}{\glsgenentryfmt}%

(You can use \ifglshasshort instead of \ifglshaslong to test if the entry is an acronym if you prefer.)

The third argument, ⟨definitions⟩, can be used to redefine the commands that affect the display style, such as \acronymfont or, if ⟨display⟩ uses \glsgenacfmt, \genacrfullformat and its variants.

Note that \setacronymstyle redefines \glsentryfull and \acrfullfmt to use \genacrfullformat (and similarly for the plural and upper case variants). If this isn’t appropriate for the style (as in the case of styles like footnote and dua) \newacronymstyle should redefine these commands within ⟨definitions⟩.

Within \newacronymstyle’s ⟨definitions⟩ argument you can also redefine

\GenericAcronymFields \GenericAcronymFields

This is a list of additional fields to be set in \newacronym. You can use the following token registers to access the entry label, long form and short form: \glslabeltok \glslabeltok, \glslongtok \glslongtok and \glsshorttok \glsshorttok. As with all TEX registers, you can access their values by preceding the register with \the. For example, the long-short style does:

\renewcommand*{\GenericAcronymFields}{%
description={\the\glslongtok}}%

which sets the description field to the long form of the acronym whereas the long-short-desc style does:

\renewcommand*{\GenericAcronymFields}{}%

since the description needs to be specified by the user.

It may be that you want to define a new acronym style that’s based on an existing style. Within ⟨display⟩ you can use

\GlsUseAcrEntryDispStyle

\GlsUseAcrEntryDispStyle{⟨style name⟩}

to use the ⟨display⟩ definition from the style given by ⟨style name⟩. Within ⟨definitions⟩ you can use

\GlsUseAcrStyleDefs \GlsUseAcrStyleDefs{⟨style name⟩}

to use the ⟨definitions⟩ from the style given by ⟨style name⟩. For example, the long-sc-short acronym style is based on the long-short style with minor modifications (remember to use ## instead of # within ⟨definitions⟩):

\newacronymstyle{long-sc-short}%
{% use the same display as "long-short"
\GlsUseAcrEntryDispStyle{long-short}%
}%
{% use the same definitions as "long-short"
\GlsUseAcrStyleDefs{long-short}%
% Minor modifications:
\renewcommand{\acronymfont}[1]{\textsc{##1}}%
\renewcommand*{\acrpluralsuffix}{\glstextup{\glspluralsuffix}}%
}

(\glstextup \glstextup is used to cancel the effect of \textsc. This defaults to \textulc, if defined, otherwise \textup. For example, the plural of s v m should be rendered as s v ms rather than s v m s.)

Example 19 (Defining a Custom Acronym Style)

Suppose I want my acronym on first use to have the short form in the text and the long form with the description in a footnote. Suppose also that I want the short form to be put in small caps in the main body of the document, but I want it in normal capitals in the list of acronyms. In my list of acronyms, I want the long form as the name with the short form in brackets followed by the description. That is, in the text I want \gls on first use to display:
\textsc{⟨abbrv⟩}\footnote{⟨long⟩: ⟨description⟩}
on subsequent use:
\textsc{⟨abbrv⟩}
and in the list of acronyms, each entry will be displayed in the form:
⟨long⟩ (⟨short⟩) ⟨description⟩

Let’s suppose it’s possible that I may have a mixed glossary. I can check this in the second argument of \newacronymstyle using:

\ifglshaslong{\glslabel}{\glsgenacfmt}{\glsgenentryfmt}%

This will use \glsgenentryfmt if the entry isn’t an acronym, otherwise it will use \glsgenacfmt. The third argument (⟨definitions⟩) of \newacronymstyle needs to redefine \genacrfullformat etc so that the first use displays the short form in the text with the long form in a footnote followed by the description. This is done as follows (remember to use ## instead of #):

% No case change, singular first use:
\renewcommand*{\genacrfullformat}[2]{%
\firstacronymfont{\glsentryshort{##1}}##2%
\footnote{\glsentrylong{##1}: \glsentrydesc{##1}}%
}%
% First letter upper case, singular first use:
\renewcommand*{\Genacrfullformat}[2]{%
\firstacronymfont{\Glsentryshort{##1}}##2%
\footnote{\glsentrylong{##1}: \glsentrydesc{##1}}%
}%
% No case change, plural first use:
\renewcommand*{\genplacrfullformat}[2]{%
\firstacronymfont{\glsentryshortpl{##1}}##2%
\footnote{\glsentrylongpl{##1}: \glsentrydesc{##1}}%
}%
% First letter upper case, plural first use:
\renewcommand*{\Genplacrfullformat}[2]{%
\firstacronymfont{\Glsentryshortpl{##1}}##2%
\footnote{\glsentrylongpl{##1}: \glsentrydesc{##1}}%
}%

If you think it inappropriate for the short form to be capitalised at the start of a sentence you can change the above to:

% No case change, singular first use:
\renewcommand*{\genacrfullformat}[2]{%
\firstacronymfont{\glsentryshort{##1}}##2%
\footnote{\glsentrylong{##1}: \glsentrydesc{##1}}%
}%
% No case change, plural first use:
\renewcommand*{\genplacrfullformat}[2]{%
\firstacronymfont{\glsentryshortpl{##1}}##2%
\footnote{\glsentrylongpl{##1}: \glsentrydesc{##1}}%
}%
\let\Genacrfullformat\genacrfullformat
\let\Genplacrfullformat\genplacrfullformat

Another variation is to use \Glsentrylong and \Glsentrylongpl in the footnote instead of \glsentrylong and \glsentrylongpl.

Now let’s suppose that commands such as \glsentryfull and \acrfull shouldn’t use a footnote, but instead use the format: ⟨long⟩ (⟨short⟩). This means that the style needs to redefine \glsentryfull, \acrfullfmt and their plural and upper case variants.

First, the non-linking commands:

\renewcommand*{\glsentryfull}[1]{%
\glsentrylong{##1}\space
(\acronymfont{\glsentryshort{##1}})%
}%
\renewcommand*{\Glsentryfull}[1]{%
\Glsentrylong{##1}\space
(\acronymfont{\glsentryshort{##1}})%
}%
\renewcommand*{\glsentryfullpl}[1]{%
\glsentrylongpl{##1}\space
(\acronymfont{\glsentryshortpl{##1}})%
}%
\renewcommand*{\Glsentryfullpl}[1]{%
\Glsentrylongpl{##1}\space
(\acronymfont{\glsentryshortpl{##1}})%
}%

Now for the linking commands:

\renewcommand*{\acrfullfmt}[3]{%
\glslink[##1]{##2}{%
\glsentrylong{##2}##3\space
(\acronymfont{\glsentryshort{##2}})%
}%
}%
\renewcommand*{\Acrfullfmt}[3]{%
\glslink[##1]{##2}{%
\Glsentrylong{##2}##3\space
(\acronymfont{\glsentryshort{##2}})%
}%
}%
\renewcommand*{\ACRfullfmt}[3]{%
\glslink[##1]{##2}{%
\MakeTextUppercase{%
\glsentrylong{##2}##3\space
(\acronymfont{\glsentryshort{##2}})%
}%
}%
}%
\renewcommand*{\acrfullplfmt}[3]{%
\glslink[##1]{##2}{%
\glsentrylongpl{##2}##3\space
(\acronymfont{\glsentryshortpl{##2}})%
}%
}%
\renewcommand*{\Acrfullplfmt}[3]{%
\glslink[##1]{##2}{%
\Glsentrylongpl{##2}##3\space
(\acronymfont{\glsentryshortpl{##2}})%
}%
}%
\renewcommand*{\ACRfullplfmt}[3]{%
\glslink[##1]{##2}{%
\MakeTextUppercase{%
\glsentrylongpl{##2}##3\space
(\acronymfont{\glsentryshortpl{##2}})%
}%
}%
}%

(This may cause problems with long hyperlinks, in which case adjust the definitions so that, for example, only the short form is inside the argument of \glslink.)

The style also needs to redefine \acronymsort so that the acronyms are sorted according to the long form:

\renewcommand*{\acronymsort}[2]{##2}%

If you prefer them to be sorted according to the short form you can change the above to:

\renewcommand*{\acronymsort}[2]{##1}%

The acronym font needs to be set to \textsc and the plural suffix adjusted so that the “s” suffix in the plural short form doesn’t get converted to smallcaps:

\renewcommand*{\acronymfont}[1]{\textsc{##1}}%
\renewcommand*{\acrpluralsuffix}{\glstextup{\glspluralsuffix}}%

There are a number of ways of dealing with the format in the list of acronyms. The simplest way is to redefine \acronymentry to the long form followed by the upper case short form in parentheses:

\renewcommand*{\acronymentry}[1]{%
\Glsentrylong{##1}\space
(\MakeTextUppercase{\glsentryshort{##1}})}%

(I’ve used \Glsentrylong instead of \glsentrylong to capitalise the name in the glossary.)

An alternative approach is to set \acronymentry to just the long form and redefine \GenericAcronymFields to set the symbol key to the short form and use a glossary style that displays the symbol in parentheses after the name (such as the tree style) like this:

\renewcommand*{\acronymentry}[1]{\Glsentrylong{##1}}%
\renewcommand*{\GenericAcronymFields}{%
symbol={\protect\MakeTextUppercase{\the\glsshorttok}}}%

I’m going to use the first approach and set \GenericAcronymFields to do nothing:

\renewcommand*{\GenericAcronymFields}{}%

Finally, this style needs to switch off hyperlinks on first use to avoid nested links:

\glshyperfirstfalse

Putting this all together:

\newacronymstyle{custom-fn}% new style name
{%
\ifglshaslong{\glslabel}{\glsgenacfmt}{\glsgenentryfmt}%
}%
{%
\renewcommand*{\GenericAcronymFields}{}%
\glshyperfirstfalse
\renewcommand*{\genacrfullformat}[2]{%
\firstacronymfont{\glsentryshort{##1}}##2%
\footnote{\glsentrylong{##1}: \glsentrydesc{##1}}%
}%
\renewcommand*{\Genacrfullformat}[2]{%
\firstacronymfont{\Glsentryshort{##1}}##2%
\footnote{\glsentrylong{##1}: \glsentrydesc{##1}}%
}%
\renewcommand*{\genplacrfullformat}[2]{%
\firstacronymfont{\glsentryshortpl{##1}}##2%
\footnote{\glsentrylongpl{##1}: \glsentrydesc{##1}}%
}%
\renewcommand*{\Genplacrfullformat}[2]{%
\firstacronymfont{\Glsentryshortpl{##1}}##2%
\footnote{\glsentrylongpl{##1}: \glsentrydesc{##1}}%
}%
\renewcommand*{\glsentryfull}[1]{%
\glsentrylong{##1}\space
(\acronymfont{\glsentryshort{##1}})%
}%
\renewcommand*{\Glsentryfull}[1]{%
\Glsentrylong{##1}\space
(\acronymfont{\glsentryshort{##1}})%
}%
\renewcommand*{\glsentryfullpl}[1]{%
\glsentrylongpl{##1}\space
(\acronymfont{\glsentryshortpl{##1}})%
}%
\renewcommand*{\Glsentryfullpl}[1]{%
\Glsentrylongpl{##1}\space
(\acronymfont{\glsentryshortpl{##1}})%
}%
\renewcommand*{\acrfullfmt}[3]{%
\glslink[##1]{##2}{%
\glsentrylong{##2}##3\space
(\acronymfont{\glsentryshort{##2}})%
}%
}%
\renewcommand*{\Acrfullfmt}[3]{%
\glslink[##1]{##2}{%
\Glsentrylong{##2}##3\space
(\acronymfont{\glsentryshort{##2}})%
}%
}%
\renewcommand*{\ACRfullfmt}[3]{%
\glslink[##1]{##2}{%
\MakeTextUppercase{%
\glsentrylong{##2}##3\space
(\acronymfont{\glsentryshort{##2}})%
}%
}%
}%
\renewcommand*{\acrfullplfmt}[3]{%
\glslink[##1]{##2}{%
\glsentrylongpl{##2}##3\space
(\acronymfont{\glsentryshortpl{##2}})%
}%
}%
\renewcommand*{\Acrfullplfmt}[3]{%
\glslink[##1]{##2}{%
\Glsentrylongpl{##2}##3\space
(\acronymfont{\glsentryshortpl{##2}})%
}%
}%
\renewcommand*{\ACRfullplfmt}[3]{%
\glslink[##1]{##2}{%
\MakeTextUppercase{%
\glsentrylongpl{##2}##3\space
(\acronymfont{\glsentryshortpl{##2}})%
}%
}%
}%
\renewcommand*{\acronymfont}[1]{\textsc{##1}}%
\renewcommand*{\acrpluralsuffix}{\glstextup{\glspluralsuffix}}%
\renewcommand*{\acronymsort}[2]{##2}%
\renewcommand*{\acronymentry}[1]{%
\Glsentrylong{##1}\space
(\MakeTextUppercase{\glsentryshort{##1}})}%
}

Now I need to specify that I want to use this new style:

\setacronymstyle{custom-fn}

I also need to use a glossary style that suits this acronym style, for example altlist:

\setglossarystyle{altlist}

Once the acronym style has been set, I can define my acronyms:

\newacronym[description={set of tags for use in
developing hypertext documents}]{html}{html}{Hyper
Text Markup Language}
\newacronym[description={language used to describe the
layout of a document written in a markup language}]{css}
{css}{Cascading Style Sheet}

The sample file sample-custom-acronym.tex illustrates this example.

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###

### 13.2 Displaying the List of Acronyms

The list of acronyms is just like any other type of glossary and can be displayed on its own using:

Option 1:
  \printnoidxglossary[type=\acronymtype]
Options 2 and 3:
  \printglossary[type=\acronymtype]

  (If you use the acronym package option you can also use

  \printacronyms[⟨options⟩]
  as a synonym for
  \printglossary[type=\acronymtype,⟨options⟩]
  See §2.5 Acronym Options.)

Alternatively the list of acronyms can be displayed with all the other glossaries using:

Option 1:
  \printnoidxglossaries
Options 2 and 3:
  \printglossaries

However, care must be taken to choose a glossary style that’s appropriate to your acronym style. Alternatively, you can define your own custom style (see §15.2 Defining your own glossary style for further details).

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###

### 13.3 Upgrading From the glossary Package

Users of the obsolete glossary package may recall that the syntax used to define new acronyms has changed with the replacement glossaries package. In addition, the old glossary package created the command \⟨acr-name⟩ when defining the acronym ⟨acr-name⟩.

In order to facilitate migrating from the old package to the new one, the glossaries package13.1 provides the command:

\oldacronym \oldacronym[⟨label⟩]{⟨abbrv⟩}{⟨long⟩}{⟨key-val list⟩}

This uses the same syntax as the glossary package’s method of defining acronyms. It is equivalent to:
\newacronym[⟨key-val list⟩]{⟨label⟩}{⟨abbrv⟩}{⟨long⟩}
In addition, \oldacronym also defines the commands \⟨label⟩, which is equivalent to \gls{⟨label⟩}, and \⟨label⟩*, which is equivalent to \Gls{⟨label⟩}. If ⟨label⟩ is omitted, ⟨abbrv⟩ is used. Since commands names must consist only of alphabetical characters, ⟨label⟩ must also only consist of alphabetical characters. Note that \⟨label⟩ doesn’t allow you to use the first optional argument of \gls or \Gls — you will need to explicitly use \gls or \Gls to change the settings.

Recall that, in general, LA TEX ignores spaces following command names consisting of alphabetical characters. This is also true for \⟨label⟩ unless you additionally load the xspace package, but be aware that there are some issues with using xspace.13.2

The glossaries package doesn’t load the xspace package since there are both advantages and disadvantages to using \xspace in \⟨label⟩. If you don’t use the xspace package you need to explicitly force a space using \␣ (backslash space) however you can follow \⟨label⟩ with additional text in square brackets (the final optional argument to \gls). If you use the xspace package you don’t need to escape the spaces but you can’t use the optional argument to insert text (you will have to explicitly use \gls).

To illustrate this, suppose I define the acronym “abc” as follows:

\oldacronym{abc}{example acronym}{}

This will create the command \abc and its starred version \abc*. Table 13.2 illustrates the effect of \abc (on subsequent use) according to whether or not the xspace package has been loaded. As can be seen from the final row in the table, the xspace package prevents the optional argument from being recognised.

Table 13.2: The effect of using xspace with \oldacronym

Code | With xspace | Without xspace
\abc. | abc. | abc.
\abc xyz | abc xyz | abcxyz
\abc\ xyz | abc xyz | abc xyz
\abc* xyz | Abc xyz | Abc xyz
\abc[’s] xyz | abc [’s] xyz | abc’s xyz

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## 14. Unsetting and Resetting Entry Flags

When using the \gls-like commands it is possible that you may want to use the value given by the first key, even though you have already used the glossary entry. Conversely, you may want to use the value given by the text key, even though you haven’t used the glossary entry. The former can be achieved by one of the following commands:

\glsreset \glsreset{⟨label⟩}

\glslocalreset \glslocalreset{⟨label⟩}

while the latter can be achieved by one of the following commands:

\glsunset \glsunset{⟨label⟩}

\glslocalunset \glslocalunset{⟨label⟩}

You can also reset or unset all entries for a given glossary or list of glossaries using:

\glsresetall \glsresetall[⟨glossary list⟩]

\glslocalresetall \glslocalresetall[⟨glossary list⟩]

\glsunsetall \glsunsetall[⟨glossary list⟩]

\glslocalunsetall \glslocalunsetall[⟨glossary list⟩]

where ⟨glossary list⟩ is a comma-separated list of glossary labels. If omitted, all defined glossaries are assumed (except for the ignored ones). For example, to reset all entries in the main glossary and the list of acronyms:

\glsresetall[main,acronym]

You can determine whether an entry’s first use flag is set using:

\ifglsused \ifglsused{⟨label⟩}{⟨true part⟩}{⟨false part⟩}

where ⟨label⟩ is the label of the required entry. If the entry has been used, ⟨true part⟩ will be done, otherwise ⟨false part⟩ will be done.

Be careful when using \gls-like commands within an environment or command argument that gets processed multiple times as it can cause unwanted side-effects when the first use displayed text is different from subsequent use.

For example, the frame environment in beamer processes its argument for each overlay. This means that the first use flag will be unset on the first overlay and subsequent overlays will use the non-first use form.

Consider the following example:

\documentclass{beamer}
\usepackage{glossaries}
\newacronym{svm}{SVM}{support vector machine}
\begin{document}
\begin{frame}
\frametitle{Frame 1}
\begin{itemize}
\item<+-> \gls{svm}
\item<+-> Stuff.
\end{itemize}
\end{frame}
\end{document}

On the first overlay, \gls{svm} produces “support vector machine (SVM)” and then unsets the first use flag. When the second overlay is processed, \gls{svm} now produces “SVM”, which is unlikely to be the desired effect. I don’t know anyway around this and I can only offer two suggestions.

Firstly, unset all acronyms at the start of the document and explicitly use \acrfull when you want the full version to be displayed:

\documentclass{beamer}
\usepackage{glossaries}
\newacronym{svm}{SVM}{support vector machine}
\glsunsetall
\begin{document}
\begin{frame}
\frametitle{Frame 1}
\begin{itemize}
\item<+-> \acrfull{svm}
\item<+-> Stuff.
\end{itemize}
\end{frame}
\end{document}

Secondly, explicitly reset each acronym on first use:

\begin{frame}
\frametitle{Frame 1}
\begin{itemize}
\item<+-> \glsreset{svm}\gls{svm}
\item<+-> Stuff.
\end{itemize}
\end{frame}

These are non-optimal, but the beamer class is too complex for me to provide a programmatic solution. Other potentially problematic environments are some tabular-like environments (but not tabular itself) that process the contents in order to work out the column widths and then reprocess the contents to do the actual typesetting.

The amsmath environments, such as align, also process their contents multiple times, but the glossaries package now checks for this.

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###

### 14.1 Counting the Number of Times an Entry has been Used (First Use Flag Unset)

As from version 4.14, it’s now possible to keep track of how many times an entry is used. That is, how many times the first use flag is unset.

This function is disabled by default as it adds extra overhead to the document build time and also switches \newglossaryentry (and therefore \newacronym) into a preamble-only command.

To enable this function, use

\glsenableentrycount \glsenableentrycount

before defining your entries. This adds two extra (internal) fields to entries: currcount and prevcount.

The currcount field keeps track of how many times \glsunset is used within the document. A local unset (using \glslocalunset) performs a local rather than global increment to currcount. Remember that not all commands use \glsunset. Only the \gls-like commands do this. The reset commands \glsreset and \glslocalreset reset this field back to zero (where \glslocalreset performs a local change).

The prevcount field stores the final value of the currcount field from the previous run. This value is read from the .aux file at the beginning of the document environment.

You can access these fields using

\glsentrycurrcount \glsentrycurrcount{⟨label⟩}

for the currcount field, and

\glsentryprevcount \glsentryprevcount{⟨label⟩}

for the prevcount field. These commands are only defined if you have used \glsenableentrycount.

For example:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{glossaries}
\makeglossaries
\glsenableentrycount
\newglossaryentry{apple}{name=apple,description={a fruit}}
\begin{document}
Total usage on previous run: \glsentryprevcount{apple}.
\gls{apple}. \gls{apple}. \glsadd{apple}\glsentrytext{apple}.
\glslink{apple}{apple}. \glsdisp{apple}{apple}. \Gls{apple}.
Number of times apple has been used: \glsentrycurrcount{apple}.
\end{document}

On the first LA TEX run, \glsentryprevcount{apple} produces 0. At the end of the document, \glsentrycurrcount{apple} produces 4. This is because the only commands that have incremented the entry count are those that use \glsunset. That is: \gls, \glsdisp and \Gls. The other commands used in the above example, \glsadd, \glsentrytext and \glslink, don’t use \glsunset so they don’t increment the entry count. On the next LA TEX run, \glsentryprevcount{apple} now produces 4 as that was the value of the currcount field for the apple entry at the end of the document on the previous run.

When you enable the entry count using \glsenableentrycount, you also enable the following commands:

\cgls \cgls[⟨options⟩]{⟨label⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

(no case-change, singular)

\cglspl \cglspl[⟨options⟩]{⟨label⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

(no case-change, plural)

\cGls \cGls[⟨options⟩]{⟨label⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

(first letter uppercase, singular), and

\cGlspl \cGlspl[⟨options⟩]{⟨label⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

(first letter uppercase, plural). These all have plus and starred variants like the analogous \gls, \glspl, \Gls and \Glspl commands.

If you don’t use \glsenableentrycount, these commands behave like \gls, \glspl, \Gls and \Glspl, respectively, only there will be a warning that you haven’t enabled entry counting. If you have enabled entry counting with \glsenableentrycount then these commands test if \glsentryprevcount{⟨label⟩} equals 1. If it doesn’t then the analogous \gls etc will be used. If it does, then the first optional argument will be ignored and

⟨cs format⟩{⟨label⟩}{⟨insert⟩}\glsunset{⟨label⟩}
will be performed, where ⟨cs format⟩ is a command that takes two arguments. The command used depends whether you have used \cgls, \cglspl, \cGls or \cGlspl.

\cglsformat \cglsformat{⟨label⟩}{⟨insert⟩}

This command is used by \cgls and defaults to

\glsentrylong{⟨label⟩}⟨insert⟩
if the entry given by ⟨label⟩ has a long form or
\glsentryfirst{⟨label⟩}⟨insert⟩
otherwise.

\cglsplformat \cglsplformat{⟨label⟩}{⟨insert⟩}

This command is used by \cglspl and defaults to

\glsentrylongpl{⟨label⟩}⟨insert⟩
if the entry given by ⟨label⟩ has a long form or
\glsentryfirstplural{⟨label⟩}⟨insert⟩
otherwise.

\cGlsformat \cGlsformat{⟨label⟩}{⟨insert⟩}

This command is used by \cGls and defaults to

\Glsentrylong{⟨label⟩}⟨insert⟩
if the entry given by ⟨label⟩ has a long form or
\Glsentryfirst{⟨label⟩}⟨insert⟩
otherwise.

\cGlsplformat \cGlsplformat{⟨label⟩}{⟨insert⟩}

This command is used by \cGlspl and defaults to

\Glsentrylongpl{⟨label⟩}⟨insert⟩
if the entry given by ⟨label⟩ has a long form or
\Glsentryfirstplural{⟨label⟩}⟨insert⟩
otherwise.

This means that if the previous count for the given entry was 1, the entry won’t be hyperlinked with the \cgls-like commands and they won’t add a line to the external glossary file. If you haven’t used any of the other commands that add information to glossary file (such as \glsadd or the \glstext-like commands) then the entry won’t appear in the glossary.

Remember that since these commands use \glsentryprevcount you need to run LA TEX twice to ensure they work correctly. The document build order is now (at least): (pdf)latex, (pdf)latex, makeglossaries, (pdf)latex.

Example 20 (Don’t index entries that are only used once)

In this example, the acronyms that have only been used once (on the previous run) only have their long form shown with \cgls.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[colorlinks]{hyperref}
\usepackage[nomain,acronym]{glossaries}
\makeglossaries
\glsenableentrycount
\setacronymstyle{long-short}
\newacronym{html}{HTML}{hypertext markup language}
\newacronym{css}{CSS}{cascading style sheets}
\newacronym{xml}{XML}{extensible markup language}
\newacronym{sql}{SQL}{structured query language}
\newacronym{rdbms}{RDBMS}{relational database management system}
\newacronym{rdsms}{RDSMS}{relational data stream management system}
\begin{document}
These entries are only used once: \cgls{sql}, \cgls{rdbms},
\cgls{xml}. These entries are used multiple times:
\cgls{html}, \cgls{html}, \cgls{css}, \cgls{css}, \cgls{css},
\cgls{rdsms}, \cgls{rdsms}.
\printglossaries
\end{document}

After a complete document build (latex, latex, makeglossaries, latex) the list of acronyms only includes the entries HTML, CSS and RDSMS. The entries SQL, RDBMS and XML only have their long forms displayed and don’t have a hyperlink.

____________________________

Remember that if you don’t like typing \cgls you can create a synonym. For example

\let\ac\cgls

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## 15. Glossary Styles

Glossaries vary from lists that simply contain a symbol with a terse description to lists of terms or phrases with lengthy descriptions. Some glossaries may have terms with associated symbols. Some may have hierarchical entries. There is therefore no single style that fits every type of glossary. The glossaries package comes with a number of pre-defined glossary styles, described in §15.1 Predefined Styles. You can choose one of these that best suits your type of glossary or, if none of them suit your document, you can defined your own style (see §15.2 Defining your own glossary style).

The glossary style can be set using the style key in the optional argument to \printnoidxglossary (Option 1) or \printglossary (Options 2 and 3) or using the command:

\setglossarystyle \setglossarystyle{⟨style-name⟩}

(before the glossary is displayed).

Some of the predefined glossary styles may also be set using the style package option, it depends if the package in which they are defined is automatically loaded by the glossaries package.

You can use the lorum ipsum dummy entries provided in the example-glossaries-*.tex files (described in §1.2 Dummy Entries for Testing) to test the different styles.

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###

### 15.1 Predefined Styles

The predefined styles can accommodate numbered level 0 (main) and level 1 entries. See the package options entrycounter, counterwithin and subentrycounter described in §2.3 Glossary Appearance Options. There is a summary of available styles in table 15.1.

Table 15.1: Glossary Styles. An asterisk in the style name indicates anything that matches that doesn’t match any previously listed style (e.g. long3col* matches long3col, long3colheader, long3colborder and long3colheaderborder). A maximum level of 0 indicates a flat glossary (sub-entries are displayed in the same way as main entries). Where the maximum level is given as — there is no limit, but note that makeindex (Option 2) imposes a limit of 2 sub-levels. If the homograph column is checked, then the name is not displayed for sub-entries. If the symbol column is checked, then the symbol will be displayed.

Style | Maximum Level | Homograph | Symbol
listdotted | 0 |  |
sublistdotted | 1 |  |
list* | 1 | ✓ |
altlist* | 1 | ✓ |
long*3col* | 1 | ✓ |
long4col* | 1 | ✓ | ✓
altlong*4col* | 1 | ✓ | ✓
long* | 1 | ✓ |
super*3col* | 1 | ✓ |
super4col* | 1 | ✓ | ✓
altsuper*4col* | 1 | ✓ | ✓
super* | 1 | ✓ |
*index* | 2 |  | ✓
treenoname* | — | ✓ | ✓
*tree* | — |  | ✓
*alttree* | — |  | ✓
inline | 1 | ✓ |

The tabular-like styles that allow multi-line descriptions and page lists use the length \glsdescwidth \glsdescwidth to set the width of the description column and the length \glspagelistwidth \glspagelistwidth to set the width of the page list column.15.1 These will need to be changed using \setlength if the glossary is too wide. Note that the long4col and super4col styles (and their header and border variations) don’t use these lengths as they are designed for single line entries. Instead you should use the analogous altlong4col and altsuper4col styles. If you want to explicitly create a line-break within a multi-line description in a tabular-like style it’s better to use \newline instead of \\.

Note that if you use the style key in the optional argument to \printnoidxglossary (Option 1) or \printglossary (Options 2 and 3), it will override any previous style settings for the given glossary, so if, for example, you do

\renewcommand*{\glsgroupskip}{}
\printglossary[style=long]

then the new definition of \glsgroupskip will not have an affect for this glossary, as \glsgroupskip is redefined by style=long. Likewise, \setglossarystyle will also override any previous style definitions, so, again

\renewcommand*{\glsgroupskip}{}
\setglossarystyle{long}

will reset \glsgroupskip back to its default definition for the named glossary style (long in this case). If you want to modify the styles, either use \newglossarystyle (described in the next section) or make the modifications after \setglossarystyle, e.g.:

\setglossarystyle{long}
\renewcommand*{\glsgroupskip}{}

As from version 3.03, you can now use the package option nogroupskip to suppress the gap between groups for the default styles instead of redefining \glsgroupskip.

All the styles except for the three- and four-column styles and the listdotted style use the command

\glspostdescription \glspostdescription

after the description. This simply displays a full stop by default. To eliminate this full stop (or replace it with something else, say, a comma) you will need to redefine \glspostdescription before the glossary is displayed. Alternatively, you can suppress it for a given entry by placing \nopostdesc in the entry’s description.

As from version 3.03 you can now use the package option nopostdot to suppress this full stop.

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####

#### 15.1.1 List Styles

The styles described in this section are all defined in the package glossary-list. Since they all use the description environment, they are governed by the same parameters as that environment. These styles all ignore the entry’s symbol. Note that these styles will automatically be available unless you use the nolist or nostyles package options.

list
  The list style uses the description environment. The entry name is placed in the optional argument of the \item command (so it will usually appear in bold by default). The description follows, and then the associated number list for that entry. The symbol is ignored. If the entry has child entries, the description and number list follows (but not the name) for each child entry. Groups are separated using \indexspace.
listgroup
  The listgroup style is like list but the glossary groups have headings.
listhypergroup
  The listhypergroup style is like listgroup but has a navigation line at the start of the glossary with links to each group that is present in the glossary. This requires an additional run through LA TEX to ensure the group information is up to date. In the navigation line, each group is separated by

  \glshypernavsep \glshypernavsep

  which defaults to a vertical bar with a space on either side. For example, to simply have a space separating each group, do:

  \renewcommand*{\glshypernavsep}{\space}

  Note that the hyper-navigation line is now (as from version 1.14) set inside the optional argument to \item instead of after it to prevent a spurious space at the start. This can be changed by redefining \glossaryheader, but note that this needs to be done after the glossary style has been set.

altlist
  The altlist style is like list but the description starts on the line following the name. (As with the list style, the symbol is ignored.) Each child entry starts a new line, but as with the list style, the name associated with each child entry is ignored.
altlistgroup
  The altlistgroup style is like altlist but the glossary groups have headings.
altlisthypergroup
  The altlisthypergroup style is like altlistgroup but has a set of links to the glossary groups. The navigation line is the same as that for listhypergroup, described above.
listdotted
  This style uses the description environment.15.2 Each entry starts with \item[], followed by the name followed by a dotted line, followed by the description. Note that this style ignores both the number list and the symbol. The length

  \glslistdottedwidth \glslistdottedwidth

  governs where the description should start. This is a flat style, so child entries are formatted in the same way as the parent entries.

sublistdotted
  This is a variation on the listdotted style designed for hierarchical glossaries. The main entries have just the name displayed. The sub entries are displayed in the same manner as listdotted.

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####

#### 15.1.2 Longtable Styles

The styles described in this section are all defined in the package glossary-long. Since they all use the longtable environment, they are governed by the same parameters as that environment. Note that these styles will automatically be available unless you use the nolong or nostyles package options. These styles fully justify the description and page list columns. If you want ragged right formatting instead, use the analogous styles described in §15.1.3 Longtable Styles (Ragged Right).

long
  The long style uses the longtable environment (defined by the longtable package). It has two columns: the first column contains the entry’s name and the second column contains the description followed by the number list. The entry’s symbol is ignored. Sub groups are separated with a blank row. The width of the first column is governed by the widest entry in that column. The width of the second column is governed by the length \glsdescwidth. Child entries have a similar format to the parent entries except that their name is suppressed.
longborder
  The longborder style is like long but has horizontal and vertical lines around it.
longheader
  The longheader style is like long but has a header row.
longheaderborder
  The longheaderborder style is like longheader but has horizontal and vertical lines around it.
long3col
  The long3col style is like long but has three columns. The first column contains the entry’s name, the second column contains the description and the third column contains the number list. The entry’s symbol is ignored. The width of the first column is governed by the widest entry in that column, the width of the second column is governed by the length \glsdescwidth, and the width of the third column is governed by the length \glspagelistwidth.
long3colborder
  The long3colborder style is like the long3col style but has horizontal and vertical lines around it.
long3colheader
  The long3colheader style is like long3col but has a header row.
long3colheaderborder
  The long3colheaderborder style is like long3colheader but has horizontal and vertical lines around it.
long4col
  The long4col style is like long3col but has an additional column in which the entry’s associated symbol appears. This style is used for brief single line descriptions. The column widths are governed by the widest entry in the given column. Use altlong4col for multi-line descriptions.
long4colborder
  The long4colborder style is like the long4col style but has horizontal and vertical lines around it.
long4colheader
  The long4colheader style is like long4col but has a header row.
long4colheaderborder
  The long4colheaderborder style is like long4colheader but has horizontal and vertical lines around it.
altlong4col
  The altlong4col style is like long4col but allows multi-line descriptions and page lists. The width of the description column is governed by the length \glsdescwidth and the width of the page list column is governed by the length \glspagelistwidth. The widths of the name and symbol columns are governed by the widest entry in the given column.
altlong4colborder
  The altlong4colborder style is like the long4colborder but allows multi-line descriptions and page lists.
altlong4colheader
  The altlong4colheader style is like long4colheader but allows multi-line descriptions and page lists.
altlong4colheaderborder
  The altlong4colheaderborder style is like long4colheaderborder but allows multi-line descriptions and page lists.

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####

#### 15.1.3 Longtable Styles (Ragged Right)

The styles described in this section are all defined in the package glossary-longragged. These styles are analogous to those defined in glossary-long but the multiline columns are left justified instead of fully justified. Since these styles all use the longtable environment, they are governed by the same parameters as that environment. The glossary-longragged package additionally requires the array package. Note that these styles will only be available if you explicitly load glossary-longragged:

\usepackage{glossaries}
\usepackage{glossary-longragged}

Note that you can’t set these styles using the style package option since the styles aren’t defined until after the glossaries package has been loaded.

longragged
  The longragged style has two columns: the first column contains the entry’s name and the second column contains the (left-justified) description followed by the number list. The entry’s symbol is ignored. Sub groups are separated with a blank row. The width of the first column is governed by the widest entry in that column. The width of the second column is governed by the length \glsdescwidth. Child entries have a similar format to the parent entries except that their name is suppressed.
longraggedborder
  The longraggedborder style is like longragged but has horizontal and vertical lines around it.
longraggedheader
  The longraggedheader style is like longragged but has a header row.
longraggedheaderborder
  The longraggedheaderborder style is like longraggedheader but has horizontal and vertical lines around it.
longragged3col
  The longragged3col style is like longragged but has three columns. The first column contains the entry’s name, the second column contains the (left justified) description and the third column contains the (left justified) number list. The entry’s symbol is ignored. The width of the first column is governed by the widest entry in that column, the width of the second column is governed by the length \glsdescwidth, and the width of the third column is governed by the length \glspagelistwidth.
longragged3colborder
  The longragged3colborder style is like the longragged3col style but has horizontal and vertical lines around it.
longragged3colheader
  The longragged3colheader style is like longragged3col but has a header row.
longragged3colheaderborder
  The longragged3colheaderborder style is like longragged3colheader but has horizontal and vertical lines around it.
altlongragged4col
  The altlongragged4col style is like longragged3col but has an additional column in which the entry’s associated symbol appears. The width of the description column is governed by the length \glsdescwidth and the width of the page list column is governed by the length \glspagelistwidth. The widths of the name and symbol columns are governed by the widest entry in the given column.
altlongragged4colborder
  The altlongragged4colborder style is like the altlongragged4col but has horizontal and vertical lines around it.
altlongragged4colheader
  The altlongragged4colheader style is like altlongragged4col but has a header row.
altlongragged4colheaderborder
  The altlongragged4colheaderborder style is like altlongragged4colheader but has horizontal and vertical lines around it.

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####

#### 15.1.4 Supertabular Styles

The styles described in this section are all defined in the package glossary-super. Since they all use the supertabular environment, they are governed by the same parameters as that environment. Note that these styles will automatically be available unless you use the nosuper or nostyles package options. In general, the longtable environment is better, but there are some circumstances where it is better to use supertabular.15.3 These styles fully justify the description and page list columns. If you want ragged right formatting instead, use the analogous styles described in §15.1.5 Supertabular Styles (Ragged Right).

super
  The super style uses the supertabular environment (defined by the supertabular package). It has two columns: the first column contains the entry’s name and the second column contains the description followed by the number list. The entry’s symbol is ignored. Sub groups are separated with a blank row. The width of the first column is governed by the widest entry in that column. The width of the second column is governed by the length \glsdescwidth. Child entries have a similar format to the parent entries except that their name is suppressed.
superborder
  The superborder style is like super but has horizontal and vertical lines around it.
superheader
  The superheader style is like super but has a header row.
superheaderborder
  The superheaderborder style is like superheader but has horizontal and vertical lines around it.
super3col
  The super3col style is like super but has three columns. The first column contains the entry’s name, the second column contains the description and the third column contains the number list. The entry’s symbol is ignored. The width of the first column is governed by the widest entry in that column. The width of the second column is governed by the length \glsdescwidth. The width of the third column is governed by the length \glspagelistwidth.
super3colborder
  The super3colborder style is like the super3col style but has horizontal and vertical lines around it.
super3colheader
  The super3colheader style is like super3col but has a header row.
super3colheaderborder
  The super3colheaderborder style is like the super3colheader style but has horizontal and vertical lines around it.
super4col
  The super4col style is like super3col but has an additional column in which the entry’s associated symbol appears. This style is designed for entries with brief single line descriptions. The column widths are governed by the widest entry in the given column. Use altsuper4col for multi-line descriptions.
super4colborder
  The super4colborder style is like the super4col style but has horizontal and vertical lines around it.
super4colheader
  The super4colheader style is like super4col but has a header row.
super4colheaderborder
  The super4colheaderborder style is like the super4colheader style but has horizontal and vertical lines around it.
altsuper4col
  The altsuper4col style is like super4col but allows multi-line descriptions and page lists. The width of the description column is governed by the length \glsdescwidth and the width of the page list column is governed by the length \glspagelistwidth. The width of the name and symbol columns is governed by the widest entry in the given column.
altsuper4colborder
  The altsuper4colborder style is like the super4colborder style but allows multi-line descriptions and page lists.
altsuper4colheader
  The altsuper4colheader style is like super4colheader but allows multi-line descriptions and page lists.
altsuper4colheaderborder
  The altsuper4colheaderborder style is like super4colheaderborder but allows multi-line descriptions and page lists.

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####

#### 15.1.5 Supertabular Styles (Ragged Right)

The styles described in this section are all defined in the package glossary-superragged. These styles are analogous to those defined in glossary-super but the multiline columns are left justified instead of fully justified. Since these styles all use the supertabular environment, they are governed by the same parameters as that environment. The glossary-superragged package additionally requires the array package. Note that these styles will only be available if you explicitly load glossary-superragged:

\usepackage{glossaries}
\usepackage{glossary-superragged}

Note that you can’t set these styles using the style package option since the styles aren’t defined until after the glossaries package has been loaded.

superragged
  The superragged style uses the supertabular environment (defined by the supertabular package). It has two columns: the first column contains the entry’s name and the second column contains the (left justified) description followed by the number list. The entry’s symbol is ignored. Sub groups are separated with a blank row. The width of the first column is governed by the widest entry in that column. The width of the second column is governed by the length \glsdescwidth. Child entries have a similar format to the parent entries except that their name is suppressed.
superraggedborder
  The superraggedborder style is like superragged but has horizontal and vertical lines around it.
superraggedheader
  The superraggedheader style is like superragged but has a header row.
superraggedheaderborder
  The superraggedheaderborder style is like superraggedheader but has horizontal and vertical lines around it.
superragged3col
  The superragged3col style is like superragged but has three columns. The first column contains the entry’s name, the second column contains the (left justified) description and the third column contains the (left justified) number list. The entry’s symbol is ignored. The width of the first column is governed by the widest entry in that column. The width of the second column is governed by the length \glsdescwidth. The width of the third column is governed by the length \glspagelistwidth.
superragged3colborder
  The superragged3colborder style is like the superragged3col style but has horizontal and vertical lines around it.
superragged3colheader
  The superragged3colheader style is like superragged3col but has a header row.
superragged3colheaderborder
  The superragged3colheaderborder style is like superragged3colheader but has horizontal and vertical lines around it.
altsuperragged4col
  The altsuperragged4col style is like superragged3col but has an additional column in which the entry’s associated symbol appears. The column widths for the name and symbol column are governed by the widest entry in the given column.
altsuperragged4colborder
  The altsuperragged4colborder style is like the altsuperragged4col style but has horizontal and vertical lines around it.
altsuperragged4colheader
  The altsuperragged4colheader style is like altsuperragged4col but has a header row.
altsuperragged4colheaderborder
  The altsuperragged4colheaderborder style is like altsuperragged4colheader but has horizontal and vertical lines around it.

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####

#### 15.1.6 Tree-Like Styles

The styles described in this section are all defined in the package glossary-tree. These styles are designed for hierarchical glossaries but can also be used with glossaries that don’t have sub-entries. These styles will display the entry’s symbol if it exists. Note that these styles will automatically be available unless you use the notree or nostyles package options. These styles all format the entry name using:

\glstreenamefmt \glstreenamefmt{⟨name⟩}

This defaults to \textbf{⟨name⟩}, but note that ⟨name⟩ includes \glsnamefont so the bold setting in \glstreenamefont may be counteracted by another font change in \glsnamefont (or in \acronymfont). The tree-like styles that also display the header use \glstreenamefmt to format the heading.

index
  The index style is similar to the way indices are usually formatted in that it has a hierarchical structure up to three levels (the main level plus two sub-levels). The name is typeset in bold, and if the symbol is present it is set in parentheses after the name and before the description. Sub-entries are indented and also include the name, the symbol in brackets (if present) and the description. Groups are separated using \indexspace.
indexgroup
  The indexgroup style is similar to the index style except that each group has a heading.
indexhypergroup
  The indexhypergroup style is like indexgroup but has a set of links to the glossary groups. The navigation line is the same as that for listhypergroup, described above.
tree
  The tree style is similar to the index style except that it can have arbitrary levels. (Note that makeindex is limited to three levels, so you will need to use xindy if you want more than three levels.) Each sub-level is indented by \glstreeindent \glstreeindent. Note that the name, symbol (if present) and description are placed in the same paragraph block. If you want the name to be apart from the description, use the alttree style instead. (See below.)
treegroup
  The treegroup style is similar to the tree style except that each group has a heading.
treehypergroup
  The treehypergroup style is like treegroup but has a set of links to the glossary groups. The navigation line is the same as that for listhypergroup, described above.
treenoname
  The treenoname style is like the tree style except that the name for each sub-entry is ignored.
treenonamegroup
  The treenonamegroup style is similar to the treenoname style except that each group has a heading.
treenonamehypergroup
  The treenonamehypergroup style is like treenonamegroup but has a set of links to the glossary groups. The navigation line is the same as that for listhypergroup, described above.
alttree
  The alttree style is similar to the tree style except that the indentation for each level is determined by the width of the text specified by

  \glssetwidest \glssetwidest[⟨level⟩]{⟨text⟩}

  The optional argument ⟨level⟩ indicates the level, where 0 indicates the top-most level, 1 indicates the first level sub-entries, etc. If \glssetwidest hasn’t been used for a given sub-level, the level 0 widest text is used instead. If ⟨level⟩ is omitted, 0 is assumed.

  For each level, the name is placed to the left of the paragraph block containing the symbol (optional) and the description. If the symbol is present, it is placed in parentheses before the description.

alttreegroup
  The alttreegroup is like the alttree style except that each group has a heading.
alttreehypergroup
  The alttreehypergroup style is like alttreegroup but has a set of links to the glossary groups. The navigation line is the same as that for listhypergroup, described above.

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####

#### 15.1.7 Multicols Style

The glossary-mcols package provides tree-like styles that are in the multicols environment (defined by the multicol package). The style names are as their analogous tree styles (as defined in §15.1.6 Tree-Like Styles) but are prefixed with “mcol”. For example, the mcolindex style is essentially the index style but put in a multicols environment. For the complete list, see table 15.2.

Note that glossary-mcols is not loaded by glossaries. If you want to use any of the multicol styles in that package you need to load it explicitly with \usepackage and set the required glossary style using \setglossarystyle.

The default number of columns is 2, but can be changed by redefining

\glsmcols \glsmcols

to the required number. For example, for a three column glossary:

\usepackage{glossary-mcols}
\renewcommand*{\glsmcols}{3}
\setglossarystyle{mcolindex}

Table 15.2: Multicolumn Styles

glossary-mcols Style | Analogous Tree Style
mcolindex | index
mcolindexgroup | indexgroup
mcolindexhypergroup | indexhypergroup
mcoltree | tree
mcoltreegroup | treegroup
mcoltreehypergroup | treehypergroup
mcoltreenoname | treenoname
mcoltreenonamegroup | treenonamegroup
mcoltreenonamehypergroup | treenonamehypergroup
mcolalttree | alttree
mcolalttreegroup | alttreegroup
mcolalttreehypergroup | alttreehypergroup

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####

#### 15.1.8 In-Line Style

This section covers the glossary-inline package that supplies the inline style. This is a style that is designed for in-line use (as opposed to block styles, such as lists or tables). This style doesn’t display the number list.

You will most likely need to redefine \glossarysection with this style. For example, suppose you are required to have your glossaries and list of acronyms in a footnote, you can do:

\usepackage{glossary-inline}
\renewcommand*{\glossarysection}[2][]{\textbf{#1}: }
\setglossarystyle{inline}

Note that you need to include glossary-inline with \usepackage as it’s not automatically included by the glossaries package and then set the style using \setglossarystyle.

Where you need to include your glossaries as a footnote you can do:

\footnote{\printglossaries}

The inline style is governed by the following:

\glsinlineseparator \glsinlineseparator

This defaults to “; ” and is used between main (i.e. level 0) entries.

\glsinlinesubseparator \glsinlinesubseparator

This defaults to “, ” and is used between sub-entries.

\glsinlineparentchildseparator \glsinlineparentchildseparator

This defaults to “: ” and is used between a parent main entry and its first sub-entry.

\glspostinline \glspostinline

This defaults to “; ” and is used at the end of the glossary.

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###

### 15.2 Defining your own glossary style

If the predefined styles don’t fit your requirements, you can define your own style using:

\newglossarystyle \newglossarystyle{⟨name⟩}{⟨definitions⟩}

where ⟨name⟩ is the name of the new glossary style (to be used in \setglossarystyle). The second argument ⟨definitions⟩ needs to redefine all of the following:

theglossary theglossary

This environment defines how the main body of the glossary should be typeset. Note that this does not include the section heading, the glossary preamble (defined by \glossarypreamble) or the glossary postamble (defined by \glossarypostamble). For example, the list style uses the description environment, so the theglossary environment is simply redefined to begin and end the description environment.

\glossaryheader \glossaryheader

This macro indicates what to do at the start of the main body of the glossary. Note that this is not the same as \glossarypreamble, which should not be affected by changes in the glossary style. The list glossary style redefines \glossaryheader to do nothing, whereas the longheader glossary style redefines \glossaryheader to do a header row.

\glsgroupheading \glsgroupheading{⟨label⟩}

This macro indicates what to do at the start of each logical block within the main body of the glossary. If you use makeindex the glossary is sub-divided into a maximum of twenty-eight logical blocks that are determined by the first character of the sort key (or name key if the sort key is omitted). The sub-divisions are in the following order: symbols, numbers, A, …, Z. If you use xindy, the sub-divisions depend on the language settings.

Note that the argument to \glsgroupheading is a label not the group title. The group title can be obtained via

\glsgetgrouptitle \glsgetgrouptitle{⟨label⟩}

This obtains the title as follows: if ⟨label⟩ consists of a single non-active character or ⟨label⟩ is equal to glssymbols or glsnumbers and \⟨label⟩groupname exists, this is taken to be the title, otherwise the title is just ⟨label⟩. (The “symbols” group has the label glssymbols, so the command \glssymbolsgroupname is used, and the “numbers” group has the label glsnumbers, so the command \glsnumbersgrouptitle is used.) If you are using xindy, ⟨label⟩ may be an active character (for example ø), in which case the title will be set to just ⟨label⟩. You can redefine \glsgetgrouptitle if this is unsuitable for your document.

A navigation hypertarget can be created using

\glsnavhypertarget \glsnavhypertarget{⟨label⟩}{⟨text⟩}

For further details about \glsnavhypertarget, see the documented code (glossaries-code.pdf).

Most of the predefined glossary styles redefine \glsgroupheading to simply ignore its argument. The listhypergroup style redefines \glsgroupheading as follows:

\renewcommand*{\glsgroupheading}[1]{%
\item[\glsnavhypertarget{##1}{\glsgetgrouptitle{##1}}]}

See also \glsgroupskip below. (Note that command definitions within \newglossarystyle must use ##1 instead of #1 etc.)

\glsgroupskip \glsgroupskip

This macro determines what to do after one logical group but before the header for the next logical group. The list glossary style simply redefines \glsgroupskip to be \indexspace, whereas the tabular-like styles redefine \glsgroupskip to produce a blank row.

As from version 3.03, the package option nogroupskip can be used to suppress this default gap for the predefined styles.

\glossentry \glossentry{⟨label⟩}{⟨number list⟩}

This macro indicates what to do for each level 0 glossary entry. The entry label is given by ⟨label⟩ and the associated number list is given by ⟨number list⟩. You can redefine \glossentry to use commands like \glossentryname{⟨label⟩}, \glossentrydesc{⟨label⟩} and \glossentrysymbol{⟨label⟩} to display the name, description and symbol fields, or to access other fields, use commands like \glsentryuseri{⟨label⟩}. (See §9 Using Glossary Terms Without Links for further details.) You can also use the following commands:

\glsentryitem \glsentryitem{⟨label⟩}

This macro will increment and display the associated counter for the main (level 0) entries if the entrycounter or counterwithin package options have been used. This macro is typically called by \glossentry before \glstarget. The format of the counter is controlled by the macro

\glsentrycounterlabel \glsentrycounterlabel

Each time you use a glossary entry it creates a hyperlink (if hyperlinks are enabled) to the relevant line in the glossary. Your new glossary style must therefore redefine \glossentry to set the appropriate target. This is done using

\glstarget \glstarget{⟨label⟩}{⟨text⟩}

where ⟨label⟩ is the entry’s label. Note that you don’t need to worry about whether the hyperref package has been loaded, as \glstarget won’t create a target if \hypertarget hasn’t been defined.

For example, the list style defines \glossentry as follows:

\renewcommand*{\glossentry}[2]{%
\item[\glsentryitem{##1}%
\glstarget{##1}{\glossentryname{##1}}]
\glossentrydesc{##1}\glspostdescription\space ##2}

Note also that ⟨number list⟩ will always be of the form

\glossaryentrynumbers{\relax
\setentrycounter[⟨Hprefix⟩]{⟨counter name⟩}⟨format cmd⟩{⟨number(s)⟩}}

where ⟨number(s)⟩ may contain \delimN (to delimit individual numbers) and/or \delimR (to indicate a range of numbers). There may be multiple occurrences of \setentrycounter[⟨Hprefix⟩]{⟨counter name⟩}⟨format cmd⟩{⟨number(s)⟩}, but note that the entire number list is enclosed within the argument of \glossaryentrynumbers. The user can redefine this to change the way the entire number list is formatted, regardless of the glossary style. However the most common use of \glossaryentrynumbers is to provide a means of suppressing the number list altogether. (In fact, the nonumberlist option redefines \glossaryentrynumbers to ignore its argument.) Therefore, when you define a new glossary style, you don’t need to worry about whether the user has specified the nonumberlist package option.

\subglossentry \subglossentry{⟨level⟩}{⟨label⟩}{⟨number list⟩}

This is used to display sub-entries. The first argument, ⟨level⟩, indicates the sub-entry level. This must be an integer from 1 (first sub-level) onwards. The remaining arguments are analogous to those for \glossentry described above.

\glssubentryitem \glssubentryitem{⟨label⟩}

This macro will increment and display the associated counter for the level 1 entries if the subentrycounter package option has been used. This macro is typically called by \subglossentry before \glstarget. The format of the counter is controlled by the macro

\glssubentrycounterlabel \glssubentrycounterlabel

Note that \printglossary (which \printglossaries calls) sets

\currentglossary \currentglossary

to the current glossary label, so it’s possible to create a glossary style that varies according to the glossary type.

For further details of these commands, see “Displaying the glossary” in the documented code (glossaries-code.pdf).

Example 21 (Creating a completely new style)

If you want a completely new style, you will need to redefine all of the commands and the environment listed above.

For example, suppose you want each entry to start with a bullet point. This means that the glossary should be placed in the itemize environment, so theglossary should start and end that environment. Let’s also suppose that you don’t want anything between the glossary groups (so \glsgroupheading and \glsgroupskip should do nothing) and suppose you don’t want anything to appear immediately after \begin{theglossary} (so \glossaryheader should do nothing). In addition, let’s suppose the symbol should appear in brackets after the name, followed by the description and last of all the number list should appear within square brackets at the end. Then you can create this new glossary style, called, say, mylist, as follows:

\newglossarystyle{mylist}{%
% put the glossary in the itemize environment:
\renewenvironment{theglossary}%
{\begin{itemize}}{\end{itemize}}%
% have nothing after \begin{theglossary}:
\renewcommand*{\glossaryheader}{}%
% have nothing between glossary groups:
\renewcommand*{\glsgroupheading}[1]{}%
\renewcommand*{\glsgroupskip}{}%
% set how each entry should appear:
\renewcommand*{\glossentry}[2]{%
\item % bullet point
\glstarget{##1}{\glossentryname{##1}}% the entry name
\space (\glossentrysymbol{##1})% the symbol in brackets
\space \glossentrydesc{##1}% the description
\space [##2]% the number list in square brackets
}%
% set how sub-entries appear:
\renewcommand*{\subglossentry}[3]{%
\glossentry{##2}{##3}}%
}

Note that this style creates a flat glossary, where sub-entries are displayed in exactly the same way as the top level entries. It also hasn’t used \glsentryitem or \glssubentryitem so it won’t be affected by the entrycounter, counterwithin or subentrycounter package options.

Variations:

- You might want the entry name to be capitalised, in which case use \Glossentryname instead of \glossentryname.
- You might want to check if the symbol hasn’t been set and omit the parentheses if the symbol is absent. In this case you can use \ifglshassymbol (see §16 Utilities):
  \renewcommand*{\glossentry}[2]{%
  \item % bullet point
  \glstarget{##1}{\glossentryname{##1}}% the entry name
  \ifglshassymbol{##1}% check if symbol exists
  {%
  \space (\glossentrysymbol{##1})% the symbol in brackets
  }%
  {}% no symbol so do nothing
  \space \glossentrydesc{##1}% the description
  \space [##2]% the number list in square brackets
  }%

____________________________

Example 22 (Creating a new glossary style based on an existing style)

If you want to define a new style that is a slightly modified version of an existing style, you can use \setglossarystyle within the second argument of \newglossarystyle followed by whatever alterations you require. For example, suppose you want a style like the list style but you don’t want the extra vertical space created by \indexspace between groups, then you can create a new glossary style called, say, mylist as follows:

\newglossarystyle{mylist}{%
\setglossarystyle{list}% base this style on the list style
\renewcommand{\glsgroupskip}{}% make nothing happen
% between groups
}

(In this case, you can actually achieve the same effect using the list style in combination with the package option nogroupskip.)

____________________________

Example 23 (Example: creating a glossary style that uses the user1, …, user6 keys)

Suppose each entry not only has an associated symbol, but also units (stored in user1) and dimension (stored in user2). Then you can define a glossary style that displays each entry in a longtable as follows:

\newglossarystyle{long6col}{%
% put the glossary in a longtable environment:
\renewenvironment{theglossary}%
{\begin{longtable}{lp{\glsdescwidth}cccp{\glspagelistwidth}}}%
{\end{longtable}}%
% Set the table’s header:
\renewcommand*{\glossaryheader}{%
\bfseries Term & \bfseries Description & \bfseries Symbol &
\bfseries Units & \bfseries Dimensions & \bfseries Page List
\\\endhead}%
% No heading between groups:
\renewcommand*{\glsgroupheading}[1]{}%
% Main (level 0) entries displayed in a row optionally numbered:
\renewcommand*{\glossentry}[2]{%
\glsentryitem{##1}% Entry number if required
\glstarget{##1}{\glossentryname{##1}}% Name
& \glossentrydesc{##1}% Description
& \glossentrysymbol{##1}% Symbol
& \glsentryuseri{##1}% Units
& \glsentryuserii{##1}% Dimensions
& ##2% Page list
\tabularnewline % end of row
}%
% Similarly for sub-entries (no sub-entry numbers):
\renewcommand*{\subglossentry}[3]{%
% ignoring first argument (sub-level)
\glstarget{##2}{\glossentryname{##2}}% Name
& \glossentrydesc{##2}% Description
& \glossentrysymbol{##2}% Symbol
& \glsentryuseri{##2}% Units
& \glsentryuserii{##2}% Dimensions
& ##3% Page list
\tabularnewline % end of row
}%
% Nothing between groups:
\renewcommand*{\glsgroupskip}{}%
}

____________________________

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## 16. Utilities

This section describes some utility commands. Additional commands can be found in the documented code (glossaries-code.pdf).

Some of the commands described here take a comma-separated list as an argument. As with LA TEX’s \@for command, make sure your list doesn’t have any unwanted spaces in it as they don’t get stripped.

\forallglossaries \forallglossaries[⟨glossary list⟩]{⟨cs⟩}{⟨body⟩}

This iterates through ⟨glossary list⟩, a comma-separated list of glossary labels (as supplied when the glossary was defined). At each iteration ⟨cs⟩ (which must be a control sequence) is set to the glossary label for the current iteration and ⟨body⟩ is performed. If ⟨glossary list⟩ is omitted, the default is to iterate over all glossaries (except the ignored ones).

\forallacronyms \forallacronyms{⟨cs⟩}{⟨body⟩}

This is like \forallglossaries but only iterates over the lists of acronyms (that have previously been declared using \DeclareAcronymList or the acronymlists package option). This command doesn’t have an optional argument. If you want to explicitly say which lists to iterate over, just use the optional argument of \forallglossaries.

\forglsentries \forglsentries[⟨glossary label⟩]{⟨cs⟩}{⟨body⟩}

This iterates through all entries in the glossary given by ⟨glossary label⟩. At each iteration ⟨cs⟩ (which must be a control sequence) is set to the entry label for the current iteration and ⟨body⟩ is performed. If ⟨glossary label⟩ is omitted, \glsdefaulttype (usually the main glossary) is used.

\forallglsentries \forallglsentries[⟨glossary list⟩]{⟨cs⟩}{⟨body⟩}

This is like \forglsentries but for each glossary in ⟨glossary list⟩ (a comma-separated list of glossary labels). If ⟨glossary list⟩ is omitted, the default is the list of all defined glossaries (except the ignored ones). At each iteration ⟨cs⟩ is set to the entry label and ⟨body⟩ is performed. (The current glossary label can be obtained using \glsentrytype{⟨cs⟩} within ⟨body⟩.)

\ifglossaryexists \ifglossaryexists⟨label⟩⟨true part⟩⟨false part⟩

This checks if the glossary given by ⟨label⟩ exists. If it does ⟨true part⟩ is performed, otherwise ⟨false part⟩.

\ifglsentryexists \ifglsentryexists⟨label⟩⟨true part⟩⟨false part⟩

This checks if the glossary entry given by ⟨label⟩ exists. If it does ⟨true part⟩ is performed, otherwise ⟨false part⟩. (Note that \ifglsentryexists will always be true after the containing glossary has been displayed via \printglossary or \printglossaries even if the entry is explicitly defined later in the document. This is because the entry has to be defined before it can be displayed in the glossary, see §4.8.1 Technical Issues for further details.)

\glsdoifexists \glsdoifexists{⟨label⟩}{⟨code⟩}

Does ⟨code⟩ if the entry given by ⟨label⟩ exists. If it doesn’t exist, an error is generated. (This command uses \ifglsentryexists.)

\glsdoifnoexists \glsdoifnoexists{⟨label⟩}{⟨code⟩}

Does the reverse of \glsdoifexists. (This command uses \ifglsentryexists.)

\glsdoifexistsorwarn \glsdoifexistsorwarn{⟨label⟩}{⟨code⟩}

As \glsdoifexists but issues a warning rather than an error if the entry doesn’t exist.

\ifglsused \ifglsused⟨label⟩⟨true part⟩⟨false part⟩

See §14 Unsetting and Resetting Entry Flags.

\ifglshaschildren \ifglshaschildren⟨label⟩⟨true part⟩⟨false part⟩

This checks if the glossary entry given by ⟨label⟩ has any sub-entries. If it does, ⟨true part⟩ is performed, otherwise ⟨false part⟩.

\ifglshasparent \ifglshasparent⟨label⟩⟨true part⟩⟨false part⟩

This checks if the glossary entry given by ⟨label⟩ has a parent entry. If it does, ⟨true part⟩ is performed, otherwise ⟨false part⟩.

\ifglshassymbol \ifglshassymbol{⟨label⟩}{⟨true part⟩}{⟨false part⟩}

This checks if the glossary entry given by ⟨label⟩ has had the symbol field set. If it has, ⟨true part⟩ is performed, otherwise ⟨false part⟩.

\ifglshaslong \ifglshaslong{⟨label⟩}{⟨true part⟩}{⟨false part⟩}

This checks if the glossary entry given by ⟨label⟩ has had the long field set. If it has, ⟨true part⟩ is performed, otherwise ⟨false part⟩. This should be true for any entry that has been defined via \newacronym. There is no check for the existence of ⟨label⟩.

\ifglshasshort \ifglshasshort{⟨label⟩}{⟨true part⟩}{⟨false part⟩}

This checks if the glossary entry given by ⟨label⟩ has had the short field set. If it has, ⟨true part⟩ is performed, otherwise ⟨false part⟩. This should be true for any entry that has been defined via \newacronym. There is no check for the existence of ⟨label⟩.

\ifglshasdesc \ifglshasdesc{⟨label⟩}{⟨true part⟩}{⟨false part⟩}

This checks if the description field is non-empty for the entry given by ⟨label⟩. If it has, ⟨true part⟩ is performed, otherwise ⟨false part⟩. Compare with:

\ifglsdescsuppressed \ifglsdescsuppressed{⟨label⟩}{⟨true part⟩}{⟨false part⟩}

This checks if the description field has been set to just \nopostdesc for the entry given by ⟨label⟩. If it has, ⟨true part⟩ is performed, otherwise ⟨false part⟩. There is no check for the existence of ⟨label⟩.

For all other fields you can use:

\ifglshasfield{⟨field⟩}{⟨label⟩}{⟨true part⟩}{⟨false part⟩}

This checks if the field given by ⟨field⟩ for the entry identified by ⟨label⟩ is empty. If it is, ⟨true part⟩ is performed, otherwise ⟨false part⟩. If the field supplied is unrecognised ⟨false part⟩ is performed and a warning is issued. Unlike the above commands, such as \ifglshasshort, an error occurs if the entry is undefined.

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## 17. Prefixes or Determiners

The glossaries-prefix package provides additional keys that can be used as prefixes. For example, if you want to specify determiners (such as “a”, “an” or “the”). The glossaries-prefix package automatically loads the glossaries package and has the same package options.

The extra keys for \newglossaryentry are as follows:

prefix
  The prefix associated with the text key. This defaults to nothing.
prefixplural
  The prefix associated with the plural key. This defaults to nothing.
prefixfirst
  The prefix associated with the first key. If omitted, this defaults to the value of the prefix key.
prefixfirstplural
  The prefix associated with the firstplural key. If omitted, this defaults to the value of the prefixplural key.

Example 24 (Defining Determiners)

Here’s the start of my example document:

documentclass{article}
\usepackage[colorlinks]{hyperref}
\usepackage[toc,acronym]{glossaries-prefix}

Note that I’ve simply replaced glossaries from previous sample documents with glossaries-prefix. Now for a sample definition17.1:

\newglossaryentry{sample}{name={sample},%
description={an example},%
prefix={a~},%
prefixplural={the\space}%
}

Note that I’ve had to explicitly insert a space after the prefix. This allows for the possibility of prefixes that shouldn’t have a space, such as:

\newglossaryentry{oeil}{name={oeil},
plural={yeux},
description={eye},
prefix={l’},
prefixplural={les\space}}

Where a space is required at the end of the prefix, you must use a spacing command, such as \space, \␣ (backslash space) or ~ due to the automatic spacing trimming performed in ⟨key⟩=⟨value⟩ options.

The prefixes can also be used with acronyms. For example:

\newacronym
[%
prefix={an\space},prefixfirst={a~}%
]{svm}{SVM}{support vector machine}

____________________________

The glossaries-prefix package provides convenient commands to use these prefixes with commands such as \gls. Note that the prefix is not considered part of the link text, so it’s not included in the hyperlink (where hyperlinks are enabled). The options and any star or plus modifier are passed on to the \gls-like command. (See §6 Links to Glossary Entries for further details.)

\pgls \pgls[⟨options⟩]{⟨label⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

This is inserts the value of the prefix key (or prefixfirst key, on first use) in front of \gls[⟨options⟩]{⟨label⟩}[⟨insert⟩].

\Pgls \Pgls[⟨options⟩]{⟨label⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

If the prefix key (or prefixfirst, on first use) has been set, this displays the value of that key with the first letter converted to upper case followed by \gls[⟨options⟩]{⟨label⟩}[⟨insert⟩]. If that key hasn’t been set, this is equivalent to \Gls[⟨options⟩]{⟨label⟩}[⟨insert⟩].

\PGLS \PGLS[⟨options⟩]{⟨label⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

As \pgls but converts the prefix to upper case and uses \GLS instead of \gls.

\pglspl \pglspl[⟨options⟩]{⟨label⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

This is inserts the value of the prefixplural key (or prefixfirstplural key, on first use) in front of \glspl[⟨options⟩]{⟨label⟩}[⟨insert⟩].

\Pglspl \Pglspl[⟨options⟩]{⟨label⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

If the prefixplural key (or prefixfirstplural, on first use) has been set, this displays the value of that key with the first letter converted to upper case followed by \glspl[⟨options⟩]{⟨label⟩}[⟨insert⟩]. If that key hasn’t been set, this is equivalent to \Glspl[⟨options⟩]{⟨label⟩}[⟨insert⟩].

\PGLSpl \PGLSpl[⟨options⟩]{⟨label⟩}[⟨insert⟩]

As \pglspl but converts the prefix to upper case and uses \GLSpl instead of \glspl.

Example 25 (Using Prefixes)

Continuing from Example 24, now that I’ve defined my entries, I can use them in the text via the above commands:

First use: \pgls{svm}. Next use: \pgls{svm}.
Singular: \pgls{sample}, \pgls{oeil}.
Plural: \pglspl{sample}, \pglspl{oeil}.

which produces:

First use: a support vector machine (SVM). Next use: an SVM. Singular: a sample, l’oeil. Plural: the samples, les yeux.

For a complete document, see sample-prefix.tex.

____________________________

This package also provides the commands described below, none of which perform any check to determine the entry’s existence.

\ifglshasprefix \ifglshasprefix{⟨label⟩}{⟨true part⟩}{⟨false part⟩}

Does ⟨true part⟩ if the entry identified by ⟨label⟩ has a non-empty value for the prefix key.

This package also provides the following commands:

\ifglshasprefixplural \ifglshasprefixplural{⟨label⟩}{⟨true part⟩}{⟨false part⟩}

Does ⟨true part⟩ if the entry identified by ⟨label⟩ has a non-empty value for the prefixplural key.

\ifglshasprefixfirst \ifglshasprefixfirst{⟨label⟩}{⟨true part⟩}{⟨false part⟩}

Does ⟨true part⟩ if the entry identified by ⟨label⟩ has a non-empty value for the prefixfirst key.

\ifglshasprefixfirstplural

\ifglshasprefixfirstplural{⟨label⟩}{⟨true part⟩}{⟨false part⟩}

Does ⟨true part⟩ if the entry identified by ⟨label⟩ has a non-empty value for the prefixfirstplural key.

\glsentryprefix \glsentryprefix{⟨label⟩}

Displays the value of the prefix key for the entry given by ⟨label⟩.

\glsentryprefixfirst \glsentryprefixfirst{⟨label⟩}

Displays the value of the prefixfirst key for the entry given by ⟨label⟩.

\glsentryprefixplural \glsentryprefixplural{⟨label⟩}

Displays the value of the prefixplural key for the entry given by ⟨label⟩. (No check is performed to determine if the entry exists.)

\glsentryprefixfirstplural

\glsentryprefixfirstplural{⟨label⟩}

Displays the value of the prefixfirstplural key for the entry given by ⟨label⟩. (No check is performed to determine if the entry exists.)

There are also variants that convert the first letter to upper case17.2:

\Glsentryprefix \Glsentryprefix{⟨label⟩}

\Glsentryprefixfirst \Glsentryprefixfirst{⟨label⟩}

\Glsentryprefixplural \Glsentryprefixplural{⟨label⟩}

\Glsentryprefixfirstplural

\Glsentryprefixfirstplural{⟨label⟩}

As with analogous commands such as \Glsentrytext, these commands aren’t expandable so can’t be used in PDF bookmarks.

Example 26 (Adding Determiner to Glossary Style)

You can use the above commands to define a new glossary style that uses the determiner. For example, the following style is a slight modification of the list style that inserts the prefix before the name:

\newglossarystyle{plist}{%
\setglossarystyle{list}%
\renewcommand*{\glossentry}[2]{%
\item[\glsentryitem{##1}%
\Glsentryprefix{##1}%
\glstarget{##1}{\glossentryname{##1}}]
\glossentrydesc{##1}\glspostdescription\space ##2}%
}

____________________________

Top

## 18. Accessibility Support

Limited accessibility support is provided by the accompanying glossaries-accsupp package, but note that this package is experimental and it requires the accsupp package which is also listed as experimental. This package defines additional keys that may be used when defining glossary entries. The keys are as follows:

access
  The replacement text corresponding to the name key.
textaccess
  The replacement text corresponding to the text key.
firstaccess
  The replacement text corresponding to the first key.
pluralaccess
  The replacement text corresponding to the plural key.
firstpluralaccess
  The replacement text corresponding to the firstplural key.
symbolaccess
  The replacement text corresponding to the symbol key.
symbolpluralaccess
  The replacement text corresponding to the symbolplural key.
descriptionaccess
  The replacement text corresponding to the description key.
descriptionpluralaccess
  The replacement text corresponding to the descriptionplural key.
longaccess
  The replacement text corresponding to the long key (used by \newacronym).
shortaccess
  The replacement text corresponding to the short key (used by \newacronym).
longpluralaccess
  The replacement text corresponding to the longplural key (used by \newacronym).
shortpluralaccess
  The replacement text corresponding to the shortplural key (used by \newacronym).

For example:

\newglossaryentry{tex}{name={\TeX},description={Document
preparation language},access={TeX}}

Now \gls{tex} will be equivalent to

\BeginAccSupp{ActualText=TeX}\TeX\EndAccSupp{}

The sample file sampleaccsupp.tex illustrates the glossaries-accsupp package.

See the documented code (glossaries-code.pdf) for further details. It is recommended that you also read the accsupp documentation.

Top

## 19. Troubleshooting

The glossaries package comes with a minimal file called minimalgls.tex which can be used for testing. This should be located in the samples subdirectory (folder) of the glossaries documentation directory. The location varies according to your operating system and TEX installation. For example, on my Linux partition it can be found in /usr/local/texlive/2013/texmf-dist/doc/latex/glossaries/. Further information on debugging LA TEX code is available at http://www.dickimaw-books.com/latex/minexample/.

If you have any problems, please first consult the glossaries FAQ. If that doesn’t help, try posting your query to somewhere like the comp.text.tex newsgroup, the LA TEX Community Forum or TEX on StackExchange. Bug reports can be submitted via my package bug report form.

Top

## Index

Symbols
\@gls@codepage 1
\@glsorder 2
\@istfilename 3
\@newglossary 4
\@xdylanguage 5

A \AA 6
\Ac 7
\ac 8
accsupp package 9, 10
\Acf 11
\acf 12
\Acfp 13
\acfp 14
\Acl 15
\acl 16
\Aclp 17
\aclp 18
\Acp 19
\acp 20
\ACRfull 21
\Acrfull 22, 23
\acrfull 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30
\acrfullfmt 31, 32, 33
\acrfullformat 34, 35
\ACRfullpl 36
\Acrfullpl 37, 38
\acrfullpl 39, 40
\ACRlong 41
\Acrlong 42, 43
\acrlong 44, 45
\ACRlongpl 46
\Acrlongpl 47, 48
\acrlongpl 49, 50
acronym styles:
dua 51, 52, 53, 54
dua-desc 55, 56
footnote 57, 58, 59
footnote-desc 60
footnote-sc 61
footnote-sc-desc 62, 63, 64, 65
footnote-sm 66
footnote-sm-desc 67
long-sc-short 68, 69, 70, 71
long-sc-short-desc 72
long-short 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78
long-short-desc 79, 80, 81
long-sm-short 82, 83, 84
long-sm-short-desc 85
sc-short-long 86
sc-short-long-desc 87
short-long 88
short-long-desc 89
sm-short-long 90
sm-short-long-desc 91
\acronymentry 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97
\acronymfont 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105
\acronymname 106, 107
\acronymsort 108, 109, 110, 111, 112
\acronymtype 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124
\ACRshort 125
\Acrshort 126, 127
\acrshort 128, 129, 130
\ACRshortpl 131
\Acrshortpl 132, 133
\acrshortpl 134, 135
\Acs 136
\acs 137
\Acsp 138
\acsp 139
\addcontentsline 140
align (environment) 141
\altnewglossary 142
amsmath package 143
\andname 144
arara 145
array package 146, 147
\AtBeginDocument 148

B \babel 149
babel package 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172
beamer class 173, 174
beamer package 175

C \cGls 176
\cgls 177, 178
\cGlsformat 179
\cglsformat 180
\cGlspl 181
\cglspl 182
\cGlsplformat 183
\cglsplformat 184
\chapter 185
\chapter* 186, 187
\currentglossary 188

D datatool package 189, 190, 191, 192
\DeclareAcronymList 193, 194, 195, 196
\defentryfmt 197
\defglsentry 198
\defglsentryfmt 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207
\DefineAcronymShortcuts 208
\delimN 209
\delimR 210
description (environment) 211, 212, 213, 214, 215
\descriptionname 216
doc package 217, 218, 219
document (environment) 220, 221, 222, 223, 224, 225, 226
\dtlcompare 227
\dtlicompare 228
\dtlletterindexcompare 229
\dtlwordindexcompare 230

E \ecapitalisewords 231
\edef 232
\emph 233
entry location 234
\entryname 235
environments:
align 236
description 237, 238, 239, 240, 241
document 242, 243, 244, 245, 246, 247, 248
equation 249
frame 250
itemize 251
longtable 252, 253, 254, 255, 256, 257
multicols 258, 259
supertabular 260, 261, 262, 263, 264
tabular 265, 266
theglossary 267, 268, 269, 270
equation (environment) 271
etex package 272
etoolbox package 273, 274
Extended Latin Alphabet 275
extended Latin character 276, 277, 278, 279, 280, 281, 282

F file types
.alg 283
.aux 284, 285, 286
.glg 287, 288, 289
.glg2 290
.glo 291, 292, 293
.gls 294, 295
.glsdefs 296
.ist 297, 298, 299, 300, 301, 302
.tex 303, 304
.xdy 305, 306, 307, 308, 309, 310, 311, 312
glo2 313
gls2 314
first use 315
flag 316
text 317
\firstacronymfont 318, 319, 320, 321, 322, 323, 324
flowfram package 325
fmtcount package 326
fontspec package 327
\footnote 328
\forallacronyms 329
\forallglossaries 330
\forallglsentries 331
\forglsentries 332
frame (environment) 333

G \Genacrfullformat 334
\genacrfullformat 335, 336, 337, 338, 339, 340
\GenericAcronymFields 341, 342, 343
\Genplacrfullformat 344
\genplacrfullformat 345, 346
glossaries package 347, 348, 349, 350, 351
glossaries-accsupp package 352, 353, 354, 355, 356
glossaries-babel package 357, 358
glossaries-polyglossia package 359
glossaries-prefix package 360, 361, 362, 363, 364
glossary counters:
glossaryentry 365
glossarysubentry 366
glossary package 367, 368, 369, 370, 371
glossary styles:
altlist 372, 373, 374, 375, 376
altlistgroup 377, 378
altlisthypergroup 379
altlong4col 380, 381, 382
altlong4colborder 383
altlong4colheader 384
altlong4colheaderborder 385
altlongragged4col 386, 387, 388
altlongragged4colborder 389
altlongragged4colheader 390, 391
altlongragged4colheaderborder 392
altsuper4col 393, 394, 395
altsuper4colborder 396
altsuper4colheader 397
altsuper4colheaderborder 398
altsuperragged4col 399, 400, 401
altsuperragged4colborder 402
altsuperragged4colheader 403, 404
altsuperragged4colheaderborder 405
alttree 406, 407, 408, 409
alttreegroup 410, 411, 412
alttreehypergroup 413, 414
index 415, 416, 417, 418, 419
indexgroup 420, 421, 422
indexhypergroup 423, 424
inline 425, 426, 427
list 428, 429, 430, 431, 432, 433, 434, 435, 436, 437, 438, 439, 440
listdotted 441, 442, 443
listgroup 444, 445
listhypergroup 446, 447, 448, 449, 450, 451, 452
long 453, 454, 455, 456, 457
long3col 458, 459, 460, 461, 462
long3colborder 463, 464
long3colheader 465, 466, 467
long3colheaderborder 468, 469
long4col 470, 471, 472, 473, 474
long4colborder 475, 476
long4colheader 477, 478, 479
long4colheaderborder 480, 481
longborder 482
longheader 483, 484, 485
longheaderborder 486, 487
longragged 488, 489, 490, 491
longragged3col 492, 493, 494, 495
longragged3colborder 496
longragged3colheader 497, 498
longragged3colheaderborder 499
longraggedborder 500
longraggedheader 501, 502
longraggedheaderborder 503
mcolalttree 504
mcolalttreegroup 505
mcolalttreehypergroup 506
mcolindex 507, 508
mcolindexgroup 509
mcolindexhypergroup 510
mcoltree 511
mcoltreegroup 512
mcoltreehypergroup 513
mcoltreenoname 514
mcoltreenonamegroup 515
mcoltreenonamehypergroup 516
super 517, 518, 519, 520
super3col 521, 522, 523, 524
super3colborder 525
super3colheader 526, 527
super3colheaderborder 528
super4col 529, 530, 531, 532, 533
super4colborder 534, 535
super4colheader 536, 537, 538
super4colheaderborder 539, 540
superborder 541
superheader 542, 543
superheaderborder 544, 545
superragged 546, 547, 548, 549
superragged3col 550, 551, 552, 553
superragged3colborder 554
superragged3colheader 555, 556
superragged3colheaderborder 557
superraggedborder 558
superraggedheader 559, 560
superraggedheaderborder 561
tree 562, 563, 564, 565, 566, 567
treegroup 568, 569, 570
treehypergroup 571, 572
treenoname 573, 574, 575
treenonamegroup 576, 577, 578
treenonamehypergroup 579, 580
glossary-inline package 581, 582
glossary-list package 583, 584, 585, 586, 587
glossary-long package 588, 589, 590, 591, 592, 593
glossary-longragged package 594, 595, 596
glossary-mcols package 597, 598, 599, 600
glossary-super package 601, 602, 603, 604, 605, 606
glossary-superragged package 607, 608, 609
glossary-tree package 610, 611, 612, 613, 614
glossaryentry (counter) 615, 616, 617, 618
\glossaryentrynumbers 619, 620, 621, 622
\glossaryheader 623, 624, 625, 626
\glossaryname 627, 628
\glossarypostamble 629, 630
\glossarypreamble 631, 632, 633, 634
\glossarysection 635
\glossarystyle 636
glossarysubentry (counter) 637
\glossentry 638, 639, 640
\Glossentrydesc 641
\glossentrydesc 642, 643
\Glossentryname 644, 645
\glossentryname 646, 647, 648
\Glossentrysymbol 649
\glossentrysymbol 650, 651
\GLS 652, 653, 654, 655
\Gls 656, 657, 658, 659, 660, 661, 662, 663, 664, 665
\gls 666, 667, 668, 669, 670, 671, 672, 673, 674, 675, 676, 677, 678, 679, 680, 681, 682, 683, 684, 685, 686, 687, 688, 689, 690, 691, 692
\gls* 693
\glsadd 694
\glsaddall 695, 696
\glsaddall options
types 697
\glsaddallunused 698
\glsaddkey 699, 700, 701, 702
\glsaddprotectedpagefmt 703, 704
\GlsAddXdyAttribute 705, 706
\GlsAddXdyCounters 707, 708
\GlsAddXdyLocation 709, 710
\glsautoprefix 711
\glsbackslash 712
\glscapscase 713, 714
\glsclearpage 715
\glsclosebrace 716
\glscustomtext 717, 718
\GlsDeclareNoHyperList 719, 720
\glsdefaulttype 721, 722, 723, 724, 725, 726
\GLSdesc 727
\Glsdesc 728
\glsdesc 729
\glsdescwidth 730, 731, 732, 733, 734, 735, 736, 737, 738, 739, 740, 741
\glsdisablehyper 742, 743, 744, 745, 746
\glsdisp 747, 748, 749, 750, 751, 752
\glsdisplay 753, 754
\glsdisplayfirst 755, 756
\glsdisplaynumberlist 757, 758, 759
\glsdoifexists 760
\glsdoifexistsorwarn 761
\glsdoifnoexists 762
\glsdosanitizesort 763
\glsenableentrycount 764, 765
\glsenablehyper 766
\glsentrycounterlabel 767
\glsentrycurrcount 768
\Glsentrydesc 769
\glsentrydesc 770
\Glsentrydescplural 771
\glsentrydescplural 772
\Glsentryfirst 773
\glsentryfirst 774
\Glsentryfirstplural 775
\glsentryfirstplural 776
\glsentryfmt 777, 778, 779, 780, 781, 782, 783, 784, 785, 786
\Glsentryfull 787
\glsentryfull 788, 789, 790, 791, 792, 793
\Glsentryfullpl 794
\glsentryfullpl 795
\glsentryitem 796, 797
\Glsentrylong 798, 799, 800, 801
\glsentrylong 802, 803, 804
\Glsentrylongpl 805, 806
\glsentrylongpl 807, 808
\Glsentryname 809
\glsentryname 810, 811
\glsentrynumberlist 812, 813
\Glsentryplural 814
\glsentryplural 815
\Glsentryprefix 816
\glsentryprefix 817
\Glsentryprefixfirst 818
\glsentryprefixfirst 819
\Glsentryprefixfirstplural 820
\glsentryprefixfirstplural 821
\Glsentryprefixplural 822
\glsentryprefixplural 823
\glsentryprevcount 824
\Glsentryshort 825
\glsentryshort 826
\Glsentryshortpl 827
\glsentryshortpl 828
\Glsentrysymbol 829
\glsentrysymbol 830, 831
\Glsentrysymbolplural 832
\glsentrysymbolplural 833
\Glsentrytext 834, 835, 836, 837, 838
\glsentrytext 839, 840, 841, 842, 843, 844
\Glsentryuseri 845
\glsentryuseri 846, 847
\Glsentryuserii 848
\glsentryuserii 849
\Glsentryuseriii 850
\glsentryuseriii 851
\Glsentryuseriv 852
\glsentryuseriv 853
\Glsentryuserv 854
\glsentryuserv 855
\Glsentryuservi 856
\glsentryuservi 857
\glsexpandfields 858
\GLSfirst 859
\Glsfirst 860
\glsfirst 861
\GLSfirstplural 862
\Glsfirstplural 863
\glsfirstplural 864
\glsgenacfmt 865, 866, 867, 868, 869, 870
\glsgenentryfmt 871, 872, 873
\glsgetgrouptitle 874
\glsglossarymark 875, 876, 877, 878, 879
\glsgroupheading 880, 881
\glsgroupskip 882, 883, 884
\glshyperlink 885, 886, 887
\glshypernavsep 888
\glsifhyper 889
\glsifhyperon 890
\glsIfListOfAcronyms 891
\glsifplural 892, 893
\glsinlineparentchildseparator 894, 895
\glsinlineseparator 896, 897
\glsinlinesubseparator 898, 899
\glsinsert 900
\glslabel 901, 902
\glslabeltok 903
\glsletentryfield 904
\glslink 905, 906, 907, 908, 909
\glslink options
counter 910, 911
format 912, 913, 914, 915, 916
hyper 917, 918, 919, 920, 921, 922, 923
local 924
\glslinkcheckfirsthyperhook 925
\glslinkvar 926
\glslistdottedwidth 927
\glslocalreset 928
\glslocalresetall 929
\glslocalunset 930
\glslocalunsetall 931
\glslongtok 932
\glsmcols 933
\glsmoveentry 934
\GLSname 935
\Glsname 936
\glsname 937
\glsnamefont 938, 939, 940
\glsnavhypertarget 941
\glsnoexpandfields 942
\glsnoidxdisplayloc 943
\glsnumberformat 944, 945
\glsnumberlistloop 946
\glsnumbersgroupname 947
\glsnumbersgrouptitle 948
\glsnumlistlastsep 949
\glsnumlistsep 950
\glsopenbrace 951
\glspagelistwidth 952, 953, 954, 955, 956, 957, 958, 959
\glspar 960
\glspercentchar 961
\GLSpl 962, 963, 964, 965, 966
\Glspl 967, 968, 969, 970, 971, 972, 973
\glspl 974, 975, 976, 977, 978, 979, 980, 981, 982, 983
\GLSplural 984
\Glsplural 985
\glsplural 986
\glspluralsuffix 987, 988, 989, 990
\glspostdescription 991
\glspostinline 992, 993
\glsprestandardsort 994, 995
\glsquote 996
\glsrefentry 997, 998, 999, 1000, 1001
\glsreset 1002, 1003
\glsresetall 1004
\glsresetentrycounter 1005
\glssee 1006, 1007, 1008, 1009, 1010
\glsseeformat 1011, 1012
\glsseeitemformat 1013
\glsseelastsep 1014
\glsseelist 1015
\glsseesep 1016
\glsSetAlphaCompositor 1017
\glsSetCompositor 1018
\glssetexpandfield 1019
\glssetnoexpandfield 1020
\glsSetSuffixF 1021
\glsSetSuffixFF 1022
\glssetwidest 1023
\GlsSetXdyCodePage 1024, 1025, 1026
\GlsSetXdyFirstLetterAfterDigits 1027
\GlsSetXdyLanguage 1028, 1029, 1030, 1031
\GlsSetXdyLocationClassOrder 1032
\GlsSetXdyMinRangeLength 1033, 1034
\glsshorttok 1035
\glssortnumberfmt 1036
\glssubentrycounterlabel 1037
\glssubentryitem 1038, 1039
\GLSsymbol 1040
\Glssymbol 1041
\glssymbol 1042, 1043
\glssymbolsgroupname 1044, 1045
\glstarget 1046, 1047
\GLStext 1048, 1049
\Glstext 1050, 1051
\glstext 1052, 1053, 1054, 1055
\glstextformat 1056, 1057, 1058, 1059
\glstextup 1060
\glstildechar 1061
\glstocfalse 1062
\glstoctrue 1063
\glstreeindent 1064
\glstreenamefmt 1065
\glstype 1066, 1067
\glsunset 1068
\glsunsetall 1069, 1070
\GlsUseAcrEntryDispStyle 1071
\GlsUseAcrStyleDefs 1072
\GLSuseri 1073
\Glsuseri 1074
\glsuseri 1075
\GLSuserii 1076
\Glsuserii 1077
\glsuserii 1078
\GLSuseriii 1079
\Glsuseriii 1080
\glsuseriii 1081
\GLSuseriv 1082
\Glsuseriv 1083
\glsuseriv 1084
\GLSuserv 1085
\Glsuserv 1086
\glsuserv 1087
\GLSuservi 1088
\Glsuservi 1089
\glsuservi 1090

H html package 1091
\hyperbf 1092
\hyperbsf 1093
\hyperemph 1094
\hyperit 1095
\hyperlink 1096, 1097
\hypermd 1098
\hyperpage 1099
hyperref package 1100, 1101, 1102, 1103, 1104, 1105, 1106, 1107, 1108, 1109, 1110, 1111, 1112, 1113, 1114, 1115, 1116, 1117, 1118, 1119, 1120, 1121, 1122
\hyperrm 1123, 1124
\hypersc 1125
\hypersf 1126
\hypersl 1127
\hypertarget 1128
\hypertt 1129
\hyperup 1130

I \ifglossaryexists 1131
\ifglsdescsuppressed 1132
\ifglsentryexists 1133
\ifglshaschildren 1134
\ifglshasdesc 1135
\ifglshaslong 1136, 1137, 1138
\ifglshasparent 1139
\ifglshasprefix 1140
\ifglshasprefixfirst 1141
\ifglshasprefixfirstplural 1142
\ifglshasprefixplural 1143
\ifglshasshort 1144, 1145
\ifglshassymbol 1146, 1147
\ifglsucmark 1148
\ifglsused 1149, 1150, 1151, 1152, 1153
\ifignoredglossary 1154
imakeidx package 1155
\include 1156
\index 1157, 1158, 1159, 1160, 1161
index package 1162
\indexname 1163
\indexspace 1164, 1165, 1166, 1167
\input 1168, 1169
inputenc package 1170, 1171, 1172, 1173, 1174, 1175
\inputencodingname 1176
\item 1177, 1178
itemize (environment) 1179

J \jobname 1180, 1181

L \label 1182
latex 1183, 1184
latexmk 1185
Latin alphabet 1186, 1187, 1188
Latin character 1189, 1190, 1191, 1192, 1193, 1194, 1195
link text 1196, 1197, 1198, 1199, 1200, 1201, 1202, 1203, 1204, 1205, 1206, 1207, 1208, 1209, 1210, 1211, 1212, 1213, 1214, 1215, 1216, 1217, 1218, 1219, 1220, 1221, 1222, 1223, 1224, 1225
\loadglsentries 1226, 1227, 1228
location list see number list
\longnewglossaryentry 1230, 1231, 1232, 1233
\longprovideglossaryentry 1234
longtable (environment) 1235, 1236, 1237, 1238, 1239, 1240
longtable package 1241, 1242

M \makefirstuc 1243, 1244, 1245
makeglossaries 1246, 1247, 1248, 1249, 1250, 1251, 1252, 1253, 1254, 1255, 1256, 1257, 1258, 1259, 1260, 1261, 1262, 1263, 1264, 1265, 1266, 1267, 1268, 1269, 1270, 1271, 1272, 1273, 1274, 1275, 1276, 1277, 1278, 1279, 1280, 1281, 1282, 1283, 1284, 1285, 1286, 1287, 1288, 1289, 1290, 1291, 1292, 1293, 1294, 1295, 1296, 1297, 1298, 1299, 1300, 1301, 1302, 1303, 1304, 1305, 1306, 1307, 1308, 1309, 1310, 1311, 1312, 1313, 1314
\makeglossaries 1315, 1316, 1317, 1318, 1319, 1320, 1321, 1322, 1323, 1324, 1325, 1326, 1327, 1328, 1329, 1330, 1331, 1332, 1333, 1334, 1335, 1336
makeglossariesgui 1337, 1338, 1339, 1340, 1341
makeidx package 1342
makeindex 1343, 1344, 1345, 1346, 1347, 1348, 1349, 1350, 1351, 1352, 1353, 1354, 1355, 1356, 1357, 1358, 1359, 1360, 1361, 1362, 1363, 1364, 1365, 1366, 1367, 1368, 1369, 1370, 1371, 1372, 1373, 1374, 1375, 1376, 1377, 1378, 1379, 1380, 1381, 1382, 1383, 1384, 1385, 1386, 1387, 1388, 1389, 1390, 1391, 1392, 1393, 1394, 1395, 1396, 1397, 1398, 1399, 1400, 1401, 1402, 1403, 1404, 1405, 1406, 1407, 1408, 1409, 1410, 1411, 1412, 1413, 1414, 1415, 1416, 1417, 1418, 1419, 1420, 1421, 1422, 1423, 1424, 1425, 1426, 1427
\makenoidxglossaries 1428, 1429, 1430, 1431
\MakeTextUppercase 1432
\markboth 1433
memoir class 1434, 1435, 1436, 1437
\memUChead 1438
mfirstuc package 1439, 1440, 1441, 1442, 1443, 1444
\mfirstucMakeUppercase 1445
multicol package 1446
multicols (environment) 1447, 1448
mwe package 1449

N nameref package 1450
\newacronym 1451, 1452, 1453, 1454, 1455, 1456, 1457, 1458, 1459, 1460, 1461, 1462, 1463, 1464, 1465, 1466, 1467, 1468, 1469, 1470, 1471, 1472, 1473, 1474, 1475, 1476, 1477, 1478, 1479, 1480, 1481, 1482, 1483, 1484, 1485
\newacronymstyle 1486, 1487, 1488
\newdualentry 1489
\newglossary 1490, 1491, 1492, 1493, 1494, 1495
\newglossary* 1496
\newglossaryentry 1497, 1498, 1499, 1500, 1501, 1502, 1503, 1504, 1505, 1506, 1507, 1508, 1509, 1510, 1511, 1512, 1513, 1514, 1515, 1516, 1517, 1518, 1519
\newglossaryentry options
access 1520
description 1521, 1522, 1523, 1524, 1525, 1526, 1527, 1528, 1529, 1530, 1531, 1532, 1533, 1534, 1535, 1536
descriptionaccess 1537
descriptionplural 1538, 1539, 1540, 1541
descriptionpluralaccess 1542
entrycounter 1543, 1544
first 1545, 1546, 1547, 1548, 1549, 1550, 1551, 1552, 1553, 1554, 1555, 1556, 1557, 1558, 1559, 1560, 1561, 1562, 1563
firstaccess 1564
firstplural 1565, 1566, 1567, 1568, 1569, 1570, 1571, 1572, 1573, 1574, 1575, 1576, 1577, 1578, 1579, 1580
firstpluralaccess 1581
format 1582
long 1583, 1584, 1585, 1586, 1587, 1588, 1589, 1590, 1591
longaccess 1592
longplural 1593, 1594, 1595, 1596, 1597, 1598, 1599, 1600, 1601
longpluralaccess 1602
name 1603, 1604, 1605, 1606, 1607, 1608, 1609, 1610, 1611, 1612, 1613, 1614, 1615, 1616, 1617, 1618, 1619, 1620, 1621, 1622, 1623, 1624, 1625, 1626, 1627, 1628, 1629, 1630, 1631, 1632
nonumberlist 1633
parent 1634, 1635, 1636, 1637
plural 1638, 1639, 1640, 1641, 1642, 1643, 1644, 1645, 1646, 1647, 1648, 1649, 1650
pluralaccess 1651
prefix 1652, 1653, 1654, 1655, 1656, 1657, 1658
prefixfirst 1659, 1660, 1661, 1662, 1663
prefixfirstplural 1664, 1665, 1666, 1667, 1668
prefixplural 1669, 1670, 1671, 1672, 1673, 1674
see 1675, 1676, 1677, 1678, 1679, 1680, 1681, 1682, 1683, 1684, 1685, 1686, 1687
short 1688, 1689, 1690, 1691, 1692, 1693, 1694, 1695
shortaccess 1696
shortplural 1697, 1698, 1699, 1700, 1701, 1702, 1703, 1704, 1705
shortpluralaccess 1706
sort 1707, 1708, 1709, 1710, 1711, 1712, 1713, 1714, 1715, 1716, 1717, 1718, 1719, 1720, 1721, 1722, 1723, 1724, 1725, 1726, 1727, 1728, 1729, 1730, 1731, 1732, 1733
subentrycounter 1734
symbol 1735, 1736, 1737, 1738, 1739, 1740, 1741, 1742, 1743, 1744
symbolaccess 1745
symbolplural 1746, 1747, 1748
symbolpluralaccess 1749
text 1750, 1751, 1752, 1753, 1754, 1755, 1756, 1757, 1758, 1759, 1760, 1761, 1762, 1763
textaccess 1764
type 1765, 1766, 1767
user1 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, 1773, 1774, 1775, 1776
user2 1777, 1778, 1779, 1780
user3 1781, 1782, 1783
user4 1784, 1785, 1786
user5 1787, 1788, 1789
user6 1790, 1791, 1792, 1793
\newglossarystyle 1794, 1795, 1796, 1797
\newignoredglossary 1798, 1799, 1800, 1801
\newline 1802, 1803
\newterm 1804, 1805
ngerman package 1806, 1807
\nohyperpage 1808
\noist 1809, 1810, 1811, 1812, 1813, 1814, 1815, 1816, 1817, 1818, 1819
Non-Latin Alphabet 1820
non-Latin character 1821, 1822, 1823, 1824, 1825, 1826, 1827, 1828, 1829, 1830, 1831
\nopostdesc 1832, 1833, 1834, 1835, 1836, 1837
number list 1838, 1839, 1840, 1841, 1842, 1843, 1844, 1845, 1846, 1847, 1848, 1849, 1850, 1851, 1852, 1853, 1854, 1855, 1856, 1857, 1858, 1859, 1860, 1861, 1862, 1863, 1864, 1865, 1866, 1867, 1868, 1869, 1870, 1871, 1872, 1873, 1874, 1875, 1876, 1877, 1878, 1879, 1880, 1881, 1882, 1883, 1884
\numberline 1885

O \oldacronym 1886, 1887

P package options:
acronym 1888, 1889, 1890, 1891, 1892, 1893, 1894, 1895, 1896, 1897, 1898, 1899, 1900, 1901, 1902, 1903, 1904, 1905, 1906, 1907, 1908, 1909, 1910, 1911
true 1912, 1913
acronymlists 1914, 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919, 1920
acronyms 1921, 1922
automake 1923, 1924, 1925
false 1926
compatible-2.07 1927, 1928, 1929
compatible-3.07 1930, 1931, 1932
counter 1933, 1934, 1935, 1936, 1937
page 1938
counterwithin 1939, 1940, 1941, 1942, 1943
description 1944, 1945, 1946, 1947, 1948, 1949, 1950, 1951, 1952
dua 1953, 1954
entrycounter 1955, 1956, 1957, 1958, 1959
false 1960
true 1961
footnote 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967
hyperfirst 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971
false 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976
true 1977, 1978
index 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983
makeindex 1984, 1985, 1986
nogroupskip 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991
false 1992
nohypertypes 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001
index 2002
nolist 2003, 2004, 2005
nolong 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009
nomain 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017
nonumberlist 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025
nopostdot 2026, 2027
false 2028
noredefwarn 2029
nostyles 2030, 2031, 2032, 2033, 2034, 2035, 2036
nosuper 2037, 2038, 2039, 2040
notranslate 2041, 2042, 2043
notree 2044, 2045, 2046
nowarn 2047, 2048
numberedsection 2049, 2050, 2051, 2052, 2053
autolabel 2054, 2055
false 2056
nameref 2057
nolabel 2058
numberline 2059, 2060
numbers 2061, 2062, 2063
order 2064, 2065, 2066
letter 2067, 2068, 2069, 2070
word 2071, 2072, 2073
sanitizesort 2074, 2075, 2076
false 2077, 2078, 2079, 2080, 2081, 2082
true 2083, 2084, 2085, 2086, 2087, 2088, 2089, 2090
savenumberlist 2091, 2092
false 2093
savewrites 2094, 2095, 2096
false 2097
section 2098, 2099
seeautonumberlist 2100, 2101, 2102, 2103
shortcuts 2104, 2105
smallcaps 2106, 2107, 2108, 2109, 2110, 2111
smaller 2112, 2113, 2114, 2115, 2116
sort 2117
def 2118, 2119, 2120, 2121, 2122, 2123, 2124
standard 2125, 2126, 2127
use 2128, 2129, 2130, 2131, 2132, 2133, 2134
style 2135, 2136, 2137, 2138, 2139, 2140, 2141
list 2142
subentrycounter 2143, 2144, 2145, 2146, 2147, 2148
false 2149
symbols 2150, 2151, 2152
toc 2153, 2154, 2155, 2156, 2157
translate 2158, 2159, 2160, 2161
babel 2162, 2163, 2164, 2165, 2166, 2167
false 2168, 2169, 2170, 2171
true 2172, 2173, 2174, 2175
ucfirst 2176
ucmark 2177, 2178
false 2179
true 2180
xindy 2181, 2182, 2183, 2184, 2185, 2186, 2187, 2188, 2189, 2190, 2191, 2192, 2193, 2194
xindygloss 2195, 2196
xindynoglsnumbers 2197, 2198
page (counter) 2199
\pagelistname 2200
pdflatex 2201, 2202
\PGLS 2203
\Pgls 2204
\pgls 2205
\PGLSpl 2206
\Pglspl 2207
\pglspl 2208
pod2man 2209
polyglossia package 2210, 2211, 2212, 2213, 2214, 2215, 2216
\printacronym 2217
\printacronyms 2218, 2219
\printglossaries 2220, 2221, 2222, 2223, 2224, 2225
\printglossary 2226, 2227, 2228, 2229, 2230, 2231, 2232, 2233, 2234, 2235, 2236, 2237, 2238
\printglossary options
entrycounter 2239
nogroupskip 2240
nonumberlist 2241
nopostdot 2242
numberedsection 2243
style 2244, 2245, 2246, 2247
subentrycounter 2248
title 2249, 2250, 2251
toctitle 2252
type 2253, 2254
\printindex 2255
\printnoidxglossaries 2256, 2257
\printnoidxglossary 2258, 2259, 2260, 2261, 2262, 2263, 2264, 2265, 2266, 2267, 2268
\printnoidxglossary options
sort 2269, 2270, 2271, 2272
\printnumbers 2273
\printsymbols 2274
\provideglossaryentry 2275, 2276

R relsize package 2277, 2278
\Roman 2279

S sanitize 2280, 2281, 2282, 2283, 2284
scrwfile package 2285
\section* 2286, 2287
\seename 2288, 2289, 2290
\SetAcronymLists 2291
\setacronymstyle 2292, 2293, 2294, 2295, 2296
\setAlphaCompositor 2297
\setCompositor 2298
\setentrycounter 2299, 2300
\setglossarypreamble 2301, 2302
\setglossarysection 2303, 2304
\setglossarystyle 2305, 2306, 2307, 2308, 2309, 2310, 2311
\setStyleFile 2312, 2313, 2314
\setupglossaries 2315
\subglossentry 2316
supertabular (environment) 2317, 2318, 2319, 2320, 2321
supertabular package 2322, 2323, 2324
\symbolname 2325

T tabular (environment) 2326, 2327
\texorpdfstring 2328
\textbf 2329
textcase package 2330, 2331
\textrm 2332
\textsc 2333, 2334, 2335, 2336, 2337, 2338
\textsmaller 2339, 2340, 2341
\textulc 2342
\textup 2343
\the 2344
theglossary (environment) 2345, 2346, 2347, 2348
\thepage 2349
tracklang package 2350, 2351
translator package 2352, 2353, 2354, 2355, 2356, 2357, 2358, 2359, 2360, 2361, 2362, 2363, 2364, 2365, 2366, 2367, 2368, 2369, 2370, 2371, 2372, 2373, 2374, 2375, 2376

W \write18 2377, 2378

X xindy 2379, 2380, 2381, 2382, 2383, 2384, 2385, 2386, 2387, 2388, 2389, 2390, 2391, 2392, 2393, 2394, 2395, 2396, 2397, 2398, 2399, 2400, 2401, 2402, 2403, 2404, 2405, 2406, 2407, 2408, 2409, 2410, 2411, 2412, 2413, 2414, 2415, 2416, 2417, 2418, 2419, 2420, 2421, 2422, 2423, 2424, 2425, 2426, 2427, 2428, 2429, 2430, 2431, 2432, 2433, 2434, 2435, 2436, 2437, 2438, 2439, 2440, 2441, 2442, 2443, 2444, 2445, 2446, 2447, 2448, 2449, 2450, 2451, 2452, 2453, 2454, 2455, 2456, 2457, 2458, 2459, 2460, 2461, 2462, 2463, 2464, 2465, 2466, 2467, 2468, 2469, 2470, 2471, 2472, 2473, 2474, 2475, 2476, 2477, 2478, 2479, 2480, 2481, 2482, 2483, 2484, 2485, 2486, 2487, 2488, 2489, 2490, 2491, 2492, 2493, 2494, 2495, 2496, 2497, 2498, 2499
xkeyval package 2500
\xspace 2501
xspace package 2502, 2503, 2504, 2505, 2506, 2507, 2508

1.1 That is, if the term has been referenced using any of the commands described in §6 Links to Glossary Entries and §7 Adding an Entry to the Glossary Without Generating Text or via \glssee (or the see key) or commands such as \acrshort.

1.2 Note that although I’ve written latex in this section, it’s better to use pdflatex, where possible, for the reasons given earlier.

1.3 As from v3.01 \gls is no longer fragile and doesn’t need protecting.

2.1 unless memoir is loaded, which case it uses \markboth

2.2 Actually it uses \mfirstucMakeUppercase which is set to textcase’s \MakeTextUppercase by the glossaries package. This makes it consistent with \makefirstuc. (The textcase package is automatically loaded by glossaries.)

2.3 Actually it sets \acronymtype to \glsdefaulttype if the acronym package option is not used, but \glsdefaulttype usually has the value main unless the nomain option has been used.

4.1 This is because \acronymtype is set to \glsdefaulttype if the acronym package option is not used.

6.1\glsdisplayfirst and \glsdisplay are now deprecated. Backwards compatibility should be preserved but you may need to use the compatible-3.07 option

8.1 makeindex will always assign a location number, even if it’s not needed, so it needs to be discarded.

8.2 Ifyou redefine \glsseeformat, keep the default value of the optional argument as \seename as both see and \glssee explicitly write [\seename] in the output file if no optional argument is given.

8.3 In versions before 3.0, \glsentryname was used, but this could cause problems when the name key was sanitized.

9.1 versions before 3.0 used \glsentryname as the default, but this could cause problems when name had been sanitized.

10.1 you can’t use the longheaderborder style for this example as you can’t use the longtable environment in two column mode.

11.1 see \setCompositor described in §3 Setting Up

11.2 see \setAlphaCompositor described in §3 Setting Up

13.1 as from version 1.18

13.2 See David Carlisle’sexplanation in http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/86565/drawbacks-of-xspace

15.1 These lengths will not be available if you use both the nolong and nosuper package options or if you use the nostyles package option unless you explicitly load the relevant package.

15.2 This style was supplied by Axel Menzel.

15.3 e.g. with the flowfram package.

17.1 Single letter words, such as “a” and “I” should typically not appear at the end of a line, hence the non-breakable space after “a” in the prefix field.

17.2 The earlier caveats about initial non-Latin characters apply.