[OS X TeX] Using texindy for French

[André Bellaïche]

Has anybody on this list tried to compile a French index with texindy ?

The main problem is the slimness of the documentation : 5 pages for  
texindy, 3 for xindy. Si I could not fien the answers to the following  
questions:

1) How does one tell texindy that the file contains diacritics?

Clearly, -L french is not enough

How does one tell it that the input encoding is applemac?

2) How does one tell texindy not to use the user provided modules as  
supplements for the default module, but as a replacement?

3) How does one tell texindy not to put a bold initial at the  
beggining of each group of words? This issue is alluded to at page 3  
of the texidy doc, but the doc says only : "There is a set of texindy  
standard modules that help to process LaTeX index files. Some of them  
are automatically loaded. Some of them are loaded by default, this can  
be turned off with a texindy option."

So, what is the option to turn off "latinletters-groups"?

4) How does one teach texindy new LaTeX macros, such as \voir, which  
should play the same role as the \see macro in makeindex, but would  
print \emph{voir} instead of \emph{see}.


My secret hope is that the designers of texindy/xindy happen to pass  
by this list, and not only give all the answers, but also decide to  
write down a serious documentation. The French version of The LaTeX  
companion does not say more then the docs.

André Bellaïche
Université Paris 7