Use a Python script to create "empty" indexes. This solves Guido's

corrupted file problem and avoids the shell escape interpretation
portability problem.  ;-(  See comments at top of newind.py for an
explanation.

Doc/tools/newind.py

@@ -0,0 +1,22 @@
+#! /usr/bin/env python
+
+"""Really nasty little script to create an empty, labeled index on stdout.
+
+Do it this way since some shells seem to work badly (and differently) with
+the leading '\b' for the first output line.  Specifically, /bin/sh on
+Solaris doesn't seem to get it right.  Once the quoting works there, it
+doesn't work on Linux any more.  ;-(
+"""
+__version__ = '$Revision$'
+#  $Source$
+
+import sys
+
+if sys.argv[1:]:
+    label = sys.argv[1]
+else:
+    label = "genindex"
+
+print "\\begin{theindex}"
+print "\\label{%s}" % label
+print "\\end{theindex}"