Help me in index creation for long documents...

[selvi]

Hi..

While creating index for a book, is there any way to create a index for only one chapter and taking all the entries to the remaining chapters like appending. Is there anything please help me..
Because at present what i am doing is, i added all the 30 chapters to a book and i am opening each and every chapter and creating an index for the particular word. So please tell is this a way to do or any easiest way is there...

Selvi

[Eero Tuovinen]

Welcome to the Forge, Selvi. Are you making a game, or what?

I'm going to guess that you use QuarkXPress for your layout, as your terminology with books and chapters sounds a lot like it. For all I know it might just be a coincidence, though, so please confirm. Also, the version of Quark you're using, if that's indeed what you're using.

Also, I'm not sure I parse your question correctly. What do you mean by "taking all the entries to the remaining chapters like appending"? Do you mean that you want to index the whole book at once, or do you want to to create an index for one chapter only?

Assuming that you're working in Quark and you're trying to index the whole book at once, it should be possible, I've done it. I'm not currently at the office, though, so I can't check the exact procedure. As I remember it you just have to open one of the chapters from the book interface and Quark indexes the whole book automatically. This is in QuarkXPress Passport 6 and I might be forgetting some special knob you have to twist, though. If you'll confirm that I've understood the question correctly, I'll check the specifics when I get to Quark the next time.

[selvi]

Thanks for helping me in this..

I am using QuarkXPress Passport 6 only. What you understood from my question is exactly correct.

Actually I tried in Quark by adding all the chapters together in a book. But if I want to add a particular word to index means, I need to open each and every chapter and I have to add the levels, then only i can able to build the index in the last chapter.

So I wanted to know if I need to create an index for a particular word (for example. "Bone Structure") in a book, should I need to add this word in all the chapters by opening the index palette? or Is there any other option we can create it only once a time in a chapter?

Please help me..

[Eero Tuovinen]

Yeah, now I'm back from the Quark wonderland... apparently I misremembered a part of it: you do, indeed, have to tag index entries for each chapter separately (index tables are by-the-chapter in Quark). This is not so bad if you do proper manual indexing, as you'll have to go through the book anyway to do that. But I can imagine that it is a bother if all you want is to tag a given phrase everywhere. After you have tagged everything you want to include in the index you don't need to open the individual chapters anymore, the actual building of the index can be done on the book level.

But yeah, I'm afraid you're stuck opening those chapters. However, if I were you, I'd also consider whether it really is wise to do it mechanically like you seem to be doing: normally you don't want to include every off-mention of a given phrase in your index, only the important places where the term is actually defined and addressed. To do that you need to check each entry by hand anyway and leave the meaningless ones out of your index.

As a suggested work-around, you could try making a pdf of the whole book and using third-party search tools for any phrase that is not quite ubiquitous in the book, but needs to be found all over the place. Then you don't need to go through all the chapters of the layout, but only the ones where the word is actually found. Another option is to look for an extension that fixes the problem, I guess; Quark is annoying exactly because it leaves this kind of specialized functions up to independent contractors.

That's all I got for now.

[selvi]

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Indexing is a horrible experience and I greatly approve of discussing it here - all the options, experiences, and tips.

However - selvi, this is a moderator post - I insist that you state what game you are working on. This site and this particular forum are dedicated only to independent role-playing games. The regular posters here are totally committed to mutual help and information in that context only.

Folks, hold off on posting until we receive a reply with that information.

Best, Ron