Can Greek letters be added to Sphinx documents as glossary terms?

Question

I want to add variables that are defined as Greek letters to my glossary in a sphinx document. For example:

.. glossary::

    :math:`{\alpha}`
        Definition for alpha

The goal is to have these variables appear in the document's index. Anyone have experience with this?

Syntax wasn't my concern, but I updated the example to eliminate confusion. I'd like to be able to define glossary terms that are Greek letters. — Eric D., Nov 30 '16 at 16:21
Sure. In the example above, a Greek letter will be added to the document with a definition. However, the Greek letter (in this case alpha) will not appear in the glossary as a term. — Eric D., Nov 30 '16 at 16:25
That is not what I see. The alpha character is there as a term in the glossary in the output. But with your example, Sphinx (1.4.9) emits this warning "WARNING: invalid single index entry ''" (which is related to the fact that glossary terms are added to the index as well). — mzjn, Nov 30 '16 at 16:32
Thanks for the comment. The indexing functionality is what I want to achieve, is that possible with Greek letters? — Eric D., Nov 30 '16 at 16:35

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 01 '16 at 12:30

Glossary terms are automatically added to the index. But that does not work for the glossary entry in the question. Sphinx emits this warning: WARNING: invalid single index entry '' (at least it does for me). This feels like a bug.

Here are two workarounds:

Use a substitution
```
|alpha|
   Description of alpha

.. |alpha| replace:: :math:`{\alpha}`
```
The drawback is that it will say "alpha" in the index instead of "α".
Use the actual alpha letter
```
α
   Description of alpha
```
Here α will be an entry in the index under the heading "Symbols".

Thanks for your help! I'm going to use the second option because it will use the character in the index. — Eric D., Dec 01 '16 at 13:04

Can Greek letters be added to Sphinx documents as glossary terms?

1 Answers1