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 used^1.1 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 covers all the various settings. If you are daunted by the size of the manual, try starting off with the much shorter guide for beginners.

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 LATEX 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.

This option works best with the sort=def setting. For any other setting, be prepared for a long document build time, especially if you have a lot of entries defined. This option is intended as a last resort for alphabetical sorting.

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 LATEX 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 “PDFLATEX” 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 LATEX write the glossary information to a temporary file which makeindex reads. Then makeindex writes a new file containing the code to typeset the glossary. LATEX then reads this file in on the next run.

This option works best if you want to sort entries according to the English alphabet and you don’t want to install Perl.

1. If you want to use makeindex’s -g option you must change the quote character using \GlsSetQuote. For example:
   \GlsSetQuote{+}

   This must be used before \makeglossaries. Note that if you are using babel, the shorthands aren’t enabled until the start of the document, so you won’t be able to use the shorthands in definitions made in the preamble.

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

   ---

   \printglossary

   ---

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

4. Run LATEX on your document. This creates files with the extensions .glo and .ist (for example, if your LATEX 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.
5. 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 LATEX 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 §1.4.4 Using makeindex explicitly (Option 2) for further details on using makeindex explicitly.)

6. Once you have successfully completed the previous step, you can now run LATEX 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 LATEX write the glossary information to a temporary file which xindy reads. Then xindy writes a new file containing the code to typeset the glossary. LATEX then reads this file in on the next run.

This is the best option if you want to sort according to a language other than English or if you want non-standard location lists.

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 LATEX on your document. This creates files with the extensions .glo and .xdy (for example, if your LATEX 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 LATEX 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, for example, -L german -C din5007-utf8.) 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}

   (and return to the previous step.) See §1.4.3 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 LATEX 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 Perl 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 LATEX document is in the file myDoc.tex, then run:

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

If you don’t have Perl installed you can use the Lua script instead:

This script doesn’t have the full functionality of the Perl script, but since modern TEX distributions come with Lua, you shouldn’t need to install anything extra to make it run. Remember that since xindy is also a Perl script, if you want to use xindy you’ll need Perl installed anyway, so there’s no point using this Lua script if you’re using xindy.

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

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).

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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 follows^1.2:

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 LATEX 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 PDFLATEX 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 §1.4.4 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 LATEX 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.

There are three other files that can be used as a minimal working example: mwe-gls.tex, mwe-acr.tex and mwe-acr-desc.tex.

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 LATEX 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 LATEX 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 LATEX 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 LATEX 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 LATEX 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 LATEX 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 LATEX 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 LATEX 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 LATEX 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 (using \glsaddkey).

sample-storage-abbr.tex

This document illustrates how add custom storage keys (using \glsaddstoragekey).

sample-storage-abbr-desc.tex

An extension of the previous example where the user needs to provide a description.

sample-chap-hyperfirst.tex

This document illustrates how to add a custom key using \glsaddstoragekey and hook into the \gls-like and \glstext-like mechanism used to determine whether or not to hyperlink an entry.

sample-font-abbr.tex

This document illustrates how to different fonts for abbreviations within the style.

sample-numberlist.tex

This document illustrates how to reference the number list in the document text. This requires an additional LATEX 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:

(For further details, see the section “UTF-8” section 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.

As from v4.24, if you are writing in German (for example, using the ngerman package or babel with the ngerman package option), and you want to use makeindex’s -g option, you’ll need to change makeindex’s quote character using:

Note that ⟨character⟩ may not be one of ? (question mark), | (pipe) or ! (exclamation mark). For example:

This must be done before \makeglossaries and any entry definitions. It’s only applicable for makeindex. This option in conjunction with ngerman will also cause makeglossaries to use the -g switch when invoking makeindex.

In general, it’s best not to use babel’s shorthands in entry definitions. For example:

The ngerman package has the shorthands on in the preamble, so they can be used if \GlsSetQuote has changed the makeindex quote character. Example:

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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:

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.

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.

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,

that contains the following:

You can now load it using:

(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:

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:

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:

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:

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:

(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 LATEX accent commands:

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

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, but you will need TEX’s shell escape enabled.

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, which uses TEX to do the sorting). 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 LATEX 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).

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.
• If makeindex warns about multiple encap values, makeglossaries will detect this and attempt to correct the problem.^1.3 Since xindy doesn’t warn about this, this correction is only provided by makeglossaries when makeindex is used. (xindy uses the order of the attributes list to determine which format should take precedence. See \GlsAddXdyAttribute in §11.2 Locations and Number lists.)

As from version 4.16, the glossaries package also comes with a Lua script called makeglossaries-lite.lua. This is a trimmed-down alternative to the makeglossaries Perl script. It doesn’t have some of the options that the Perl version has and it doesn’t attempt to diagnose any problems, but since modern TEX distributions come with LuaTEX (and therefore have a Lua interpreter) you don’t need to install anything else in order to use makeglossaries-lite.lua so it’s an alternative to makeglossaries if you want to use Option 2 (makeindex).

If things go wrong and you can’t work out why your glossaries aren’t being generated correctly, you can use makeglossariesgui as a diagnostic tool. Once you’ve fixed the problem, you can then go back to using makeglossaries or makeglossaries-lite.lua.

Whilst I strongly recommended that you use the makeglossaries Perl script or the makeglossaries-lite.lua Lua script, it is possible to use the glossaries package without using those applications. However, note that some commands and package options have no effect if you explicitly run makeindex/xindy. These are listed in table 1.3.

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:^1.4

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

(Note that if you use glossaries-extra, this will be done automatically for you if the indexcrossrefs feature is enabled. See the glossaries-extra user guide for further details.)

Likewise, an additional makeglossaries and LATEX 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 LATEX 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 LATEX 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 LATEX 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.

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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.

As from makeglossaries v2.18, if you are using makeindex, there’s a check for makeindex’s multiple encap warning. This is where different encap values (location formats) are used on the same location for the same entry. For example:

If you explicitly use makeindex, this will cause a warning and the location list will be “1, 1”. That is, the page number will be repeated with each format. As from v2.18, makeglossaries will check for this warning and, if found, will attempt to correct the problem by removing duplicate locations and retrying. There’s no similar check for xindy as xindy won’t produce any warning and will simply discard duplicates.

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.

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1.4.2 Using the makeglossaries-lite.lua Lua Script

The Lua alternative to the makeglossaries Perl script requires a Lua interpreter, which should already be available if you have a modern TEX distribution that includes LuaTEX. Lua is a light-weight, cross-platform scripting language, but because it’s light-weight it doesn’t have the full-functionality of heavy-weight scripting languages, such as Perl. The makeglossaries-lite.lua script is therefore limited by this and some of the options available to the makeglossaries Perl script aren’t available here. (In particular the -d option.)

The makeglossaries-lite.lua script can be invoked in the same way as makeglossaries but you need to remember the .lua extension. For example, if your document is called myDoc.tex, then do
makeglossaries-lite.lua myDoc

Some of the options available with makeglossaries are also available with makeglossaries-lite.lua. For a complete list of available options, do
makeglossaries-lite.lua --help

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1.4.3 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:

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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1.4.4 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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1.4.5 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

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:

The indexing application’s style file is specified by

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:

where ⟨order⟩ can be either word or letter.

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

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

for every time an entry has been referenced.

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).

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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). Note that the debug=true will override this option.

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.

debug

Introduced in version 4.24, this boolean option switches on the debug mode. Note that the debug mode will automatically cancel the nowarn option. Consider the following example document:

\documentclass{article}  
\usepackage{glossaries}  
\newglossaryentry{sample1}{name={sample1},description={example}}  
\newglossaryentry{sample2}{name={sample2},description={example}}  
\glsadd{sample2}  
\makeglossaries  
\begin{document}  
\gls{sample1}.  
\printglossaries  
\end{document}

Here, only the sample1 entry has been indexed, even though \glsadd{sample2} appears in the source code. This is because the associated file is opened by \makeglossaries, but \glsadd{sample2} has been used before this command. Since the file isn’t open yet, the information can’t be written to it, which is why the sample2 entry doesn’t appear in the glossary.

This situation doesn’t cause any errors or warnings as it’s perfectly legitimate for a user to want to use glossaries to format the entries (e.g. abbreviation expansion) but not display any lists of terms, abbreviations, symbols etc. Without \makeglossaries (or \makenoidxglossaries) the indexing is suppressed but, other than that, commands like \gls behave as usual.

The debug mode, enabled with the debug option, will write information to the log file when the indexing can’t occur because the associated file isn’t open. The message is written in the form

Package glossaries Info: wrglossary(⟨type⟩)(⟨line⟩) on input line ⟨line number⟩.

where ⟨type⟩ is the glossary label and ⟨line⟩ is the line of text that would’ve been written to the associated file if it had been open. So if any entries haven’t appeared in the glossary but you’re sure you used commands like \glsadd or \glsaddall, try switching on the debug option and see if any information has been written to the log file.

seenoindex

Introduced in version 4.24, this option may take one of three values: error, warn or ignore. The see key automatically indexes the cross-referenced entry using \glsadd. This means that it suffers from the same problem as the above. If used before the relevant glossary file has been opened, the indexing can’t be performed. Since this is easy to miss, the glossaries package by default issues an error message if the see key is used before \makeglossaries. This option allows you to change the error into just a warning (seenoindex=warn) or ignore it (seenoindex=ignore).

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 LATEX 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. (You can, instead, redefine \glslinkpostsetkeys, which is used by both the \gls-like and \glstext-like commands.)

indexonlyfirst

This is a boolean option that specifies whether to only add information to the external glossary file on first use. The default is indexonlyfirst=false, which will add a line to the file every time one of the \gls-like or \glstext-like commands are used. Note that \glsadd will always add information to the external glossary file^2.1 (since that’s the purpose of that command).

You can customise this by redefining

---

\glswriteentry  \glswriteentry{⟨label⟩}{⟨wr-code⟩}

---

where ⟨label⟩ is the entry’s label and ⟨wr-code⟩ is the code that writes the entry’s information to the external file. The default definition of \glswriteentry is:

\newcommand*{\glswriteentry}[2]{%  
  \ifglsindexonlyfirst  
    \ifglsused{#1}{}{#2}%  
  \else  
    #2%  
  \fi  
}

This checks the indexonlyfirst package option (using \ifglsindexonlyfirst) and does ⟨wr-code⟩ if this is false otherwise it only does ⟨wr-code⟩ of the entry hasn’t been used.

For example, suppose you only want to index the first use for entries in the acronym glossary and not in the main (or any other) glossary:

\renewcommand*{\glswriteentry}[2]{%  
 \ifthenelse{\equal{\glsentrytype{#1}}{acronym}}  
 {\ifglsused{#1}{}{#2}}%  
 {#2}%  
}

Here I’ve used \ifthenelse to ensure the arguments of \equal are fully expanded before the comparison is made.

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.

Top

2.2 Sectioning, Headings and TOC Options

toc

Add the glossaries to the table of contents. Note that an extra LATEX 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^2.2 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^2.3. 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.

Top

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 LATEX 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.

Top

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).

Note that the group styles (such as listgroup) are incompatible with the sort=use and sort=def options.

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 LATEX runs to ensure the document is up-to-date with this setting.

Since this package option attempts to run the indexing application on every LATEX 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.

Top

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.^2.4 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. (That is, you don’t intend to use the main 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 and Other Abbreviations for further details. Alternatively you can use:

---

\DefineAcronymSynonyms  \DefineAcronymSynonyms

---

Top

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 and Other Abbreviations 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 and don’t intend to use the main 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 and don’t intend to use the main 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 and don’t intend to use the main 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

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).

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.

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3.1 Option 1

The command

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

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.

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

That this command must not be used after \makeglossaries.

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:

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

For example:

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:

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:

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

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 §4.10 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.

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:

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

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:

and

\longprovideglossaryentry 

(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. The reason for this restriction is that the label is used to construct internal commands that store the associated information (similarly to commands like \label) and therefore must be able to expand to a valid control sequence name.

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. As is typical with ⟨key⟩=⟨value⟩ lists, values that contain a comma or equal sign must be enclosed in braces. 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.

If the name key contains any commands, you must also use the sort key (described below) if you intend sorting the entries alphabetically, otherwise the entries can’t be sorted correctly.

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 §4.7 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 LATEX accents (that is, accents generated by core LATEX 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=élite
}

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. If you use xindy and aren’t using the def or use sort methods, always use the sort key for entries where the name just consists of a control sequence (for example name={\alpha}).

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 and Other Abbreviations).

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 or \glsaddstoragekey (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.

This key essentially provides a convenient shortcut that performs

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

after the entry has been defined.

For Options 2 and 3, \makeglossaries must be used before any occurrence of \newglossaryentry that contains the see key. This key has no effect for entries defined in the document environment.

If you use the see key, you may want to consider using the supplementary glossaries-extra package.

The following keys are reserved for \newacronym (see §13 Acronyms and Other Abbreviations): 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:

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

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 LATEX 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

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

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:

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:

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:

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:

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

and use them in the text:

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 the commands described in this section. There are two types of keys: those for use within the document and those to store information used behind the scenes by other commands.

For example, if you want to add a key that indicates the associated unit for a term, you might want to reference this unit in your document. In this case use \glsaddkey described in §4.4 Document Keys. If, on the other hand, you want to add a key to indicate to a glossary style or acronym style that this entry should be formatted differently to other entries, then you can use \glsaddstoragekey described in §4.5 Storage Keys.

In both cases, a new command ⟨no link cs⟩ will be defined that can be used to access the value of this key (analogous to commands such as \glsentrytext). This can be used in an expandable context (provided any fragile commands stored in the key have been protected). The new keys must be added using \glsaddkey or \glsaddstoragekey before glossary entries are defined.

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4.4 Document Keys

A custom key that can be used in the document is defined using:

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:

Now I can define some entries:

These entries can later be used in the document:

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

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4.5 Storage Keys

A custom key that can be used for simply storing information is defined using:

where the arguments are as the first three arguments of \glsaddkey, described above in §4.4 Document Keys.

This is essentially the same as \glsaddkey except that it doesn’t define the additional commands. You can access or update the value of your new field using the commands described in §16.3 Fetching and Updating the Value of a Field.

Example 4 (Defining Custom Storage Key (Acronyms and Initialisms))

Suppose I want to define acronyms and other forms of abbreviations, such as initialisms, but I want them all in the same glossary and I want the acronyms on first use to be displayed with the short form followed by the long form in parentheses, but the opposite way round for other forms of abbreviations.^4.1

Here I can define a new key that determines whether the term is actually an acronym rather than some other form of abbreviation. I’m going to call this key abbrtype (since type already exists):

Now I can define a style that looks up the value of this new key to determine how to display the full form:

Remember that the new style needs to be set before defining any terms:

Since it’s a bit confusing to use \newacronym for something that’s not technically an acronym, let’s define a new command for initialisms:

Now the entries can all be defined:

On first use, \gls{radar} will produce “radar (radio detecting and ranging)” but \gls{dsp} will produce “DSP (digital signal processing)”.

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

In the above example, if \newglossaryentry is explicitly used (instead of through \newacronym) the abbrtype key will be set to its default value of “word” but the \ifglshaslong test in the custom acronym style will be false (since the long key hasn’t been set) so the display style will switch to that given by \glsgenentryfmt and they’ll be no test performed on the abbrtype field.

Example 5 (Defining Custom Storage Key (Acronyms and Non-Acronyms with Descriptions))

The previous example can be modified if the description also needs to be provided. Here I’ve changed “word” to “acronym”:

This may seem a little odd for non-abbreviated entries defined using \newglossaryentry directly, but \ifglshaslong can be used to determine whether or not to reference the value of this new abbrtype field.

The new acronym style has a minor modification that forces the user to specify a description. In the previous example, the line:

needs to be changed to:

Additionally, to accommodate the change in the default value of the abbrtype key, all instances of

need to be changed to:

Once this new style has been set, the new acronyms can be defined using the optional argument to set the description:

No change is required for the definition of \newinitialism but again the optional argument is required to set the description:

We can also accommodate contractions in a similar manner to the initialisms:

The contractions can similarly been defined using this new command:

Since the custom acronym style just checks if abbrtype is acronym, the contractions will be treated the same as the initialisms, but the style could be modified by a further test of the abbrtype value if required.

To test regular non-abbreviated entries, I’ve also defined a simple word:

Now for a new glossary style that provides information about the abbreviation (in addition to the description):

This uses \ifglshaslong to determine whether or not the term is an abbreviation. If it has an abbreviation, the full form is supplied in parentheses and \abbrtype (defined by \glsaddstoragekey earlier) is used to indicate the type of abbreviation.

With this style set, the apple entry is simply displayed in the glossary as

apple

a fruit.

but the abbreviations are displayed in the form

laser

(acronym: light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation) device that creates a narrow beam of intense light.

(for acronyms) or

DSP

(initialism: digital signal processing) mathematical manipulation of an information signal.

(for initalisms) or

fo’c’s’le

(contraction: forecastle) front part of a ship below the deck.

(for contractions).

For a complete document, see the sample file sample-storage-abbr-desc.tex.

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4.6 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

or

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.

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

and

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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4.7 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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4.7.1 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 6 (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:

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:

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

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4.7.2 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:

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:

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:

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4.8 Loading Entries From a File

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

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.

Example 7 (Loading Entries from Another File)

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

and suppose in my document preamble I use the command:

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 and Other Abbreviations) the type is set as type=\acronymtype unless you explicitly override it. For example, if my file myacronyms.tex contains:

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

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.^4.2

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:

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

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

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4.9 Moving Entries to Another Glossary

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

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.)