Index conflict with babel Package

Question

\For the shown, MWE I have an issue which that the index package (any of the indexes package: makeidx,imakeidx,xindy,xindex) does not generate the index upon compilation. However, Upon removing the option (layout=counters.lists.tabular) within the babel package. The file index is generated normally. Does anyone know a workaround this since I need such option in order to maintain numbering in the document to appear with the main document language.

\documentclass[a4paper,12pt,twoside]{book}
%General Settings
\usepackage[a4paper,top=2.5cm,bottom=2.5cm,margin=2.5cm,bindingoffset=0.5cm]{geometry} % Set paper layout

%==================================================================================================
%CROSS-Referencing
%==================================================================================================

\usepackage{makeidx}
    \makeindex

%======================================================================================================
%Babel Package Settings%
%======================================================================================================

\usepackage[nil,bidi=basic-r,layout=counters.lists.tabular]{babel}
\babelprovide[import=ar,mapdigits,main]{arabic}
\babelprovide[import=en,language=Default]{english}
\babelfont{rm}{Latin Modern Roman}
\babelfont[arabic]{rm}{amiri}
%==================================================
%Start actual document %
%===================================================


\title{jhhjjhhj}
\author{}
\date{}


\begin{document}
 يسبسيسيب
 سيبيسيبيسب
 سيبيسبسيبس
 سيبسيبسيب
\index{dfdfdf}
\end{document}
``````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````

Answer 1

Update

Using bidi=basic allows us to dispense with layout=counters. This means we can run xindy without any of the below perl hacks.

This also shows how you might have two indexes for two languages.

Run

$ lualatex filename.tex
$ texindy -L persian-variant1 -C utf8 filename.idx
$ texindy -C utf8 filename-en.idx
$ lualatex filename.tex

The texindy commands are supposed to run automatically if you call lualatex with --shell-escape, but for some reason they don't for me :/.

MWE

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[bidi=basic,layout=lists.tabular]{babel}
\babelprovide[import=ar,mapdigits,main]{arabic}
\babelprovide[import=en,language=Default]{english}
\babelfont[arabic]{rm}{Amiri}
\babelfont[english]{rm}{Latin Modern Roman}

\usepackage[xindy,nonewpage]{imakeidx}
\makeindex[options=-L persian-variant1 -C utf8]
\makeindex[name=\jobname-en, options=-C utf8]


\begin{document}
يسبسيسيب
\index{أَلِف}

يسبسيسيب
\index{بَاء}

يسبسيسيب
\index[\jobname-en]{Alpha@\foreignlanguage{english}{Alpha}}

يسبسيسيب
\index[\jobname-en]{Beta@\foreignlanguage{english}{Beta}}

\printindex
\selectlanguage{english}
\printindex[\jobname-en]
\end{document}

---

Original answer

Difficult. And I don't really understand what is going on here.

This is what happens. With the babel option layout=counters.lists.tabular, an extra macro gets inserted into the idx file by babel with the page number. This causes the indexing programs to die. Perhaps babel should not do this.

So for \index{أَلِف} the idx file has a line in it like this:

\indexentry{أَلِف}{\babelsublr  {1}}

But we want it to look like this:

\indexentry{أَلِف}{1}

So, what to do? We could use a perl one-liner to edit the file:

perl -pi -e 's/\\babelsublr\s*?{(.*?)}/$1/'

For the actual index set up, I think you need to use xindy. Sadly I find xindy very difficult to understand and use. It's not very well documented and there are few examples. There are no Arabic rules, but some have suggested that it's possible to xindy-persian.

I do seem to be able to get semi-sensible results.

MWE

I build this manually using the following commands:

$ lualatex filename.tex
$ perl -pi -e 's/\\babelsublr\s*?{(.*?)}/$1/' filename.idx
$ xindy -L persian-variant1 -C utf8 -M numeric-sort -M latex -M latex-loc-fmts -M texindy filename.idx
$ lualatex filename.tex

I get the xindy command line from here.

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[bidi=basic-r,layout=counters.lists.tabular]{babel}
\babelprovide[import=ar,mapdigits,main]{arabic}
\babelprovide[import=en,language=Default]{english}
\babelfont[arabic]{rm}{Amiri}
\babelfont[english]{rm}{Latin Modern Roman}

\usepackage[xindy,nonewpage]{imakeidx}
\makeindex[noautomatic]

\begin{document}
 يسبسيسيب
\index{أَلِف}

يسبسيسيب
\index{بَاء}

يسبسيسيب
\index{Alpha@\foreignlanguage{english}{Alpha}}

يسبسيسيب
\index{Beta@\foreignlanguage{english}{Beta}}

\printindex
\end{document}