Upgrading from the glossary package to the glossaries package

Nicola L.C. Talbot

17th June 2008


Contents

Abstract:

The purpose of this document is to provide advice if you want to convert a LaTeX document from using the obsolete glossary package to the replacement glossaries package.

1 Package Options

When converting a document that currently uses the obsolete glossary package to the replacement glossaries package, it should be fairly obvious that the first thing you need to do is replace \usepackage{glossary} with \usepackage{glossaries}, however some of the package options are different, so you may need to change those as well. Table 1 shows the mappings from the glossary to the glossaries package options.


Table 1: Mappings from glossary to glossaries package options
glossary option glossaries option
style=list style=list
style=altlist style=altlist
style=long,header=none,border=none,cols=2 style=long
style=long,header=plain,border=none,cols=2 style=longheader
style=long,header=none,border=plain,cols=2 style=longborder
style=long,header=plain,border=plain,cols=2 style=longheaderborder
style=long,header=none,border=none,cols=3 style=long3col
style=long,header=plain,border=none,cols=3 style=long3colheader
style=long,header=none,border=plain,cols=3 style=long3colborder
style=long,header=plain,border=plain,cols=3 style=long3colheaderborder
style=super,header=none,border=none,cols=2 style=super
style=super,header=plain,border=none,cols=2 style=superheader
style=super,header=none,border=plain,cols=2 style=superborder
style=super,header=plain,border=plain,cols=2 style=superheaderborder
style=super,header=none,border=none,cols=3 style=super3col
style=super,header=plain,border=none,cols=3 style=super3colheader
style=super,header=none,border=plain,cols=3 style=super3colborder
style=super,header=plain,border=plain,cols=3 style=super3colheaderborder
number=none nonumberlist
number=<counter name> counter=<counter name>
toc toc
hypertoc toc
hyper no corresponding option
section=true section
section=false no corresponding option
acronym acronym
global no corresponding option

2 Defining new glossary types

If you have created new glossary types, you will need to replace all instances of

\newglossarytype[<log-ext>]{<type>}{<out-ext>}{<in-ext>}[<style list>]
\newcommand{\<type>name}{<title>}

with

\newglossary[<log-ext>]{<type>}{<out-ext>}{<in-ext>}{<title>}

in the preamble, and

\glossarystyle{<new style>}

immediately before \printglossary[type=<type>], if the new glossary requires a different style to the main (default) glossary.

The <style list> optional argument can be converted to <new style> using the same mapping given in Table 1.

For example, if your document contains the following:

\newglossarytype[nlg]{notation}{not}{ntn}[style=long,header]
\newcommand{\notationname}{Index of Notation}
You will need to replace the above two lines with:
\newglossary[nlg]{notation}{not}{ntn}{Index of Notation}
in the preamble, and
\glossarystyle{longheader}
immediately prior to displaying this glossary new type.

Alternatively, you can specify the style using the style key in the optional argument of \printglossary. For example:

\printglossary[type=notation,style=longheader]

Note that the glossary title is no longer specified using \<glossary-type>name (except for \glossaryname and \acronymname) but is instead specified in the <title> argument of \newglossary. The short title which is specified in the glossary package by the command \short<glossary-name>name is now specified using the toctitle key in the optional argument to \printglossary.

3 \make<glossary name>

All instances of \make<glossary name> (e.g. \makeglossary and \makeacronym) should be replaced by the single command \makeglossaries. For example, if your document contained the following:

\makeglossary
\makeacronym
then you should replace both lines with the single line:
\makeglossaries

4 Storing glossary information

With the old glossary package you could optionally store glossary information for later use, or you could simply use \glossary whenever you wanted to add information to the glossary. With the new glossaries package, the latter option is no longer available.1 If you have stored all the glossary information using \storeglosentry, then you will need to convert these commands into the equivalent \newglossaryentry. If you haven't used \storeglosentry, then you'll have a bit more work to do!

The former approach requires substituting all instances of

\storeglosentry{<label>}{<gls-entry>}

with

\newglossaryentry{<label>}{<gls-entry>}

This should be fairly easy to do using the search and replace facility in your editor (but see notes below).

If you have used the optional argument of \storeglosentry (i.e. you have multiple glossaries) then you will need to substitute

\storeglosentry[<gls-type>]{<label>}{<gls-entry>}

with

\newglossaryentry{<label>}{<gls-entry>,type=<gls-type>}

The glossary entry information <gls-entry> may also need changing. If <gls-entry> contains any of makeindex's special characters (i.e. @ ! " or |) then they should no longer be escaped with " since the glossaries package deals with these characters internally. For example, if your document contains the following:

\storeglosentry{card}{name={$"|\mathcal{S}"|$},
description={The cardinality of the set $\mathcal{S}$}}
then you will need to replace it with:
\newglossaryentry{card}{name={$|\mathcal{S}|$},
description={The cardinality of the set $\mathcal{S}$}}

The format and number keys available in \storeglosentry are not available with \newglossaryentry.

5 Adding an entry to the glossary

The glossary package provided two basic means to add information to the glossary: firstly, the term was defined using \storeglosentry and the entries for that term were added using \useglosentry, \useGlosentry and \gls. Secondly, the term was added to the glossary using \glossary. This second approach is unavailable with the glossaries package.


5.1 \useglosentry

The glossary package allows you to add information to the glossary for a predefined term without producing any text in the document using

\useglosentry[<old options>]{<label>}

Any occurrences of this command will need to be replaced with

\glsadd[<new options>]{<label>}

The format key in <old options> remains the same in <new options>, the number=<counter name> key in <old options> should be replaced with
counter=<counter name> in <new options>.

5.2 \useGlosentry

The glossary package allows you to add information to the glossary for a predefined term with the given text using

\useGlosentry[<old options>]{<label>}{<text>}

Any occurrences if this command will need to be replaced with

\glslink[<new options>]{<label>}{<text>}

The mapping from <old options> to <new options> is the same as that given above.

5.3 \gls

Both the glossary and the glossaries packages define the command \gls. In this case, the only thing you need to change is the number key in the optional argument to counter. Note that the new form of \gls also takes a final optional argument which can be used to insert text into the automatically generated text.

5.4 \glossary

When using the glossaries package, you should not use \glossary directly.2 If, with the old package, you have opted to explicitly use \glossary instead of storing the glossary information with \storeglosentry, then converting from glossary to glossaries will be more time-consuming, although in the end, I hope you will see the benefits!3 If you have used \glossary with the old glossary package, you will instead need to define the relevant glossary terms using \newglossaryentry and reference the terms using \glslink, \gls (or \glspl etc).

If you don't like the idea of continually scrolling back to the preamble to type all your \newglossaryentry commands, you may prefer to create a new file, in which to store all these commands, and then input that file in your document's preamble. Most text editors and front-ends allow you to have multiple files open, and you can tab back and forth between them.

6 Acronyms

In the glossary package, acronyms were treated differently to glossary entries. This resulted in inconsistencies and sprawling unmaintainable code. The new glossaries package treats acronyms in exactly the same way as normal glossary terms. In fact, in the glossaries package, the default definition of:

\newacronym[<options>]{<label>}{<abbrv>}{<long>}

is a shortcut for:

\newglossaryentry{<label>}{type=\acronymtype, name={<abbrv>}, description={<long>}, text={<abbrv>}, first={<long> (<abbrv>)}, plural={<abbrv>s}, firstplural={<long>s (<abbrv>s)}, <options>}

This is different to the glossary package which set the name key to <long> (<abbrv>) and allowed you to set a description using the description key. If you still want to do this, you can use the description package option, and use the description key in the optional argument of \newacronym.

For example, if your document originally had the following:

\newacronym{SVM}{Support Vector Machine}{description=Statistical
pattern recognition technique}
Then you would need to load the glossaries package using the description package option, for example:
\usepackage[description]{glossaries}
and change the acronym definition to:
\newacronym[description=Statistical pattern recognition 
technique]{svm}{SVM}{Support Vector Machine}
You will also need to replace all occurrences of \SVM with \gls{svm}. Alternatively, you can define \SVM:
\newcommand{\SVM}{\gls{svm}}
Remember that generally LaTeX ignores all spaces following command names that consist of a backslash followed by letters! For example, using the above definition of \SVM, the following will ignore the space after \SVM:
The \SVM is a statistical pattern recognition technique.
Instead, you need to explicitly insert a space:
The \SVM\ is a statistical pattern recognition technique.
However, \SVM['s] is equivalent to \gls{svm}['s], so you can do, for example:
The \SVM['s] parameters are obtained via optimisation techniques.

The xspace package provides the command \xspace which can be used to insert a space after the command name if required. Some people prefer to use this at the end of the command definition so that they don't need to remember to insert an explicit space. For example, if we use the xspace package, we could define \SVM as follows:

\newcommand{\SVM}{\gls{svm}\xspace}
so now the following will have a space before the word "is":
The \SVM is a statistical pattern recognition technique.
However, you can no longer do \SVM['s], as the \xspace is now in the way.

If you have used \useacronym instead of \<acr-name>, then you will need to replace all occurrences of

\useacronym[<insert>]{<acr-name>}

with

\gls{<label>}[<insert>]

Note that the starred versions of \useacronym and \<acr-name> (which make the first letter uppercase) should be replaced with \Gls{<label>}.

6.1 \acrln and \acrsh

In the glossary package, it is possible to produce the long and short forms of an acronym without adding an entry to the glossary using \acrln and \acrsh. With the glossaries package (provided you defined the acronym using \newacronym and provided you haven't redefined \newacronym) you can replace

\acrsh{<acr-name>}

with

\acrshort{<label>}

and you can replace

\acrln{<acr-name>}

with

\acrlong{<label>}

The glossaries package also provides the related commands \acrshortpl (plural short form) and \acrlongpl (plural long form) as well as upper case variations.

See the section "Using glossary entries in the text" of the glossaries manual for further details of how to use these commands.

6.2 \ifacronymfirstuse

The glossary package command

\ifacronymfirstuse{<acr-name>}{<text1>}{<text2>}

can be replaced by the glossaries command:

\ifglsused{<label>}{<text2>}{<text1>}

Note that \ifglsused evaluates the opposite condition to that of \ifacronymfirstuse which is why the last two arguments have been reversed.

6.3 \resetacronym and \unsetacronym

The glossary package allows you to reset and unset the acronym flag which is used to determine whether the acronym has been used in the document. The glossaries package also provides a means to do this on either a local or global level. To reset an acronym, you will need to replace:

\resetacronym{<acr-name>}

with either

\glsreset{<label>}

or

\glslocalreset{<label>}

To unset an acronym, you will need to replace:

\unsetacronym{<acr-name>}

with either

\glsunset{<label>}

or

\glslocalunset{<label>}

7 Displaying the glossary

The glossary package provides the command \printglossary (or \print<type> for other glossary types) which can be used to print individual glossaries. The glossaries package provides the command \printglossaries which will print all the glossaries which have been defined, or \printglossary[<options>] to print individual glossaries. So if you just have \printglossary, then you can leave it as it is, but if you have, say:

\printglossary
\printglossary[acronym]
or
\printglossary
\printacronym
then you will need to either replace this with either
\printglossaries
or
\printglossary
\printglossary[type=\acronymtype]

The glossary package allows you to specify a short title (for the table of contents and page header) by defining a command of the form \short<glossary-type>name. The glossaries package doesn't do this, but instead provides the toctitle key which can be used in the optional argument to \printglossary. For example, if you have created a new glossary type called notation, and you had defined

\newcommand{\shortnotationname}{Notation}
then you would need to use the toctitle key:
\printglossary[type=notation,toctitle=Notation]
The glossaries package will ignore \shortnotationname, so unless you have used it elsewhere in the document, you may as well remove the definition.

8 Using makeindex

If you convert your document from using the glossary package to the glossaries package, you will need to delete any of the additional files, such as the .glo file, that were created by the glossary package, as the glossaries package uses a different makeindex style file. Remember also, that if you used the makeglos Perl script, you will need to use the makeglossaries Perl script instead.

9 Troubleshooting

Please check the FAQ for the glossaries package if you have any problems.



Footnotes

... available.1
mainly because having a key value list in \glossary caused problems, but it also helps consistency.
... directly.2
This is because \glossary requires the argument to be in a specific format and doesn't use the <key>=<value> format that the old glossary package used. The new package's internal commands set this format, as well as escaping any of makeindex's special characters, so although it is still possible to use \glossary with the new package, it's not recommended. If you persist in using \glossary with the new package, don't complain if things go wrong!
... benefits!3
From the user's point of view, using \glossary throughout the document is time consuming, and if you use it more than once for the same term, there's a chance extra spaces may creep in which will cause makeindex to treat the two entries as different terms, even though they look the same in the document.