Creating a glossary in LaTeX

Note that this uses the deprecated ‘glossary’ package. At the moment I’m using the ‘nomencl’ package, which LyX has built-in support for.

First, add to your preamble something like this: 

\usepackage[style=list]{glossary} % can be obtained from http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/glossary/
\makeglossary
\newacronym{GNU}{GNU's Not Unix}{description={A computer operating system composed entirely of free software.}}
\storeglosentry{linux}{name={Linux}, description={Any Unix-like computer operating system that uses the Linux kernel.}}

And add the following lines where you want the glossary to appear: 

\printglossary
\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Glossary} % remove this line if you don't want a table of contents entry for the glossary

Then, where you want to reference glossary entries: 

\gls{linux} % displays name field of the linux entry (in this case "Linux")
\useGlosentry{linux}{GNU/Linux} % displays "GNU/Linux"
\GNU % displays "GNU's Not Unix (GNU)" the first time this is used
\GNU % displays "GNU" all subsequent times
% NB: remember to use \GNU\ if want to retain the space after the acronym

To generate the glossary, run: 

makeindex 'file.glo' -s 'file.ist' -t 'file.glg' -o 'file.gls' # replace 'file' with the appropriate name for your files

If you use Kile, and want to generate the glossary from the menu, first do the following:

  • Settings
  • Configure Kile...
  • Tools
  • Build
  • New Tool...
  • MakeGlossary
  • Next
  • MakeIndex
  • Finish
  • General
  • Command: makeindex
  • Options: '%S.glo' -s '%S.ist' -t '%S.glg' -o '%S.gls'
  • Advanced
  • Source extension: glo
  • Target extension: gls
  • Menu
  • Add tool to Build menu: Compile
  • OK

And then to generate the glossary do Build>Compile>MakeGlossary.

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