index and item separation

Question

I'm currently creating an index with the book class. I would like to play with the vertical separation between items in the index. Below is what I am redefining:

\renewcommand\@idxitem{\par\hangindent 40\p@}
\renewcommand\subitem{\vspace*{-2\p@}\@idxitem \hspace*{20\p@}}
\renewcommand\subsubitem{\vspace*{-4\p@}\@idxitem \hspace*{30\p@}}

and I control the vertical space with two \vspace* commands. Is this correct? Thanks

Answer 1

Your approach will produce variable vertical separation. However, by adding negative vertical space to subitems and subsubitems, their respective separation will actually be smaller than the vertical space between two lines of the same ((sub)sub)item, which may be confusing (besides producing rather cramped text lines). As an alternative, consider adding positive vertical space to items and subitems.