Universe

Blindex (blindex:0.4.0) is an index-generating Typst package taylored to some specific needs of biblical literature (i) quoting, (ii) referencing, and (iii) indexing. Target audience includes authors of any area of knowledge that make frequent use of biblical literature citations in their work, including theologians, historians, philosophers, and classic linguists alike.

Blindex user-facing functions are highly-customizable. Check the API documentation for details.

Index Sorting Options

The generated indices are gathered and sorted by Biblical literature books, which can be ordered according to various Biblical literature book ordering conventions, including:

  • "code" – All registered Biblical literature books.
  • "USX" – Unified Scripture XML: All registered Biblical literature books. Default.
  • "LXX" – The Septuagint;
  • "Greek-Bible" – Septuagint + New Testament (King James);
  • "Hebrew-Tanakh" – The Hebrew (Torah + Neviim + Ketuvim);
  • "Hebrew-Bible" – The Hebrew Tanakh + New Testament (King James);
  • "Protestant-Bible" – The Protestant Old + New Testaments;
  • "Catholic-Bible" – The Catholic Old + New Testaments;
  • "Orthodox-Bible" – The Orthodox Old + New Testaments;
  • "Oecumenic-Bible" – The Jewish Tanakh + Old Testament Deuterocanonical + New Testament;

Biblical Literature Abbrevations

It is common practice in biblical literature referencing to refer to biblical literature books by their abbreviations rather than through standard bibliographical methods, since biblical literature commonly gathers books within a larger book. Practice shows that abbreviation conventions are language- and tradition- dependent. Therefore, blindex usage reflects this fact, while offering a way to input arbitrary language-tradition abbreviations, by extending the lang/ source tree.

Language and Traditions (Variants)

The blindex implementation generalizes the concept of tradition (in the context of biblical literature book abbreviation bookkeeping) as language variants, since the software can have things such as a “default” of “n-char” variants.

As of the current release, supported languages include the following few ones:

Language Variant Description Name
English USX USX abbreviations en-USX
English 3-char A 3-char abbreviations en-3
English Logos Used in logos.com en-logos
Portuguese (BR) Protestant Protestant for Brazil br-pro
Portuguese (BR) Catholic Catholic for Brazil br-cat
French Œcuménique (TOB) Ecumenical in French fr-TOB

Additional language-variations can be added to the lang/ source tree by the author and/or by pull requests to the dev branch of the development repository https://github.com/cnaak/blindex.typ, i.e., not the Typst packages one.

Low-Level Indexing Command

The blindex library has a low-level index entry marking function #blindex(abrv, lang, entry), whose arguments are (abbreviation, language, entry), as in:

"the citation..." #blindex("1Thess", "en-logos", [1.1--3])

Following the usual index making strategy in Typst, this use of the #blindex command only adds the index-marking #metadata in the document, without producing any visible typeset output.

Biblical literature index listings can be generated (typeset) in arbitrary amounts and locations throughout the document, just by calling the user #mk-index command:

#mk-index()

Optional arguments control style and sorting convention parameters, as explained in the API.

Higher-Level Quoting-Indexing Commands

The library also offers higher-level functions to assemble the entire (i) quote typesetting, (ii) reference typesetting, optional (iii) bibliography, and (iv) indexing entrying of the passage. Styling options offer maximum control over the output formatting, as well as allows for document-wide standardization through function redefinitions through with, according to typst documentation.

Higher-level quoting-referencing-indexing functions are #ind-inl(...), #ind-blk(...), respectively for inline and block quoting of Biblical literature, with automatic indexing and optional bibliography citation. There’s also a helper #ver[...] function for convenient verse number formatting, mostly aimed at being used within block quotes.

Check the API documentation for details.

Examples

The thumbnail.typ briefly showcases likely common package workflows. It renders as

thumbnail

Brief Release Summary

  • 0.1.0 - initial release
  • 0.2.0 - improved usability and configurability
  • 0.3.0 - breaking re-casing (to camel-case) of user-facing definitions
  • 0.4.0 - Full API refactoring and documentation

Citing

This package can be cited with the following bibliography database entry:

blindex-package:
  type: Web
  author: Naaktgeboren, C.
  title:
    value: "Blindex: Index-making of Biblical literature citations in Typst"
    short: "Blindex: Index-making in Typst"
  url: https://github.com/cnaak/blindex.typ
  version: 0.4.0
  date: 2026-03