[scribus-dev] makeindex etc.

[Louis Desjardins]

2014-07-04 10:24 GMT-04:00 Gregory Pittman <gpittman at iglou.com>:

> On 07/04/2014 02:51 AM, Craig Bradney wrote:
> >>
> >> on debian i don't think i can install makeindex without installing the
> >> full latex.
> >> i don't think that you can download it for windows or os x, either
> >>
> >> but having had a look at the makeindex project page, it seems indeed
> >> possible to use it as a standalone software... i guess that we would
> >> have to add it to the scribus sources, then...
> >>
> >> or expect the user to install the full latex package...
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
> > Agree. I don't think we'll ever want to depend on that monster.
> >
> > I'm sure we can write our own indexing code, but using the idea from
> latex.
> >
> From what I could tell, makeindex is dependent on inserting markup into
> your document, which to me seems almost like having to do the index
> manually in a sense.
>

Sorry in advance if this has already been discussed. What’s below is not
new. People who deal with indexes all the time know that better than I do.
However as I have encountered some index issues before, here’s a bit of
what I know.

We have basically three choices:

1. Create from scratch a *concordance file* (a list of the words you want
to have indexed in your document)
The indexing program compares the list against the document and tags the
words to produce the index. Notably, we can expand the program’s
capapilities to co-occurrences and not only single words. Example: "open
source software" and not only "open" or "source" or "software"... or others
like "tar sands"... etc.

2. Create the concordance file using the program’s capabilities to
initially propose a list of potential candidates to be indexed, using
various parameters (minimum length of word, number of occurrences, among
other things). This list must then be thoroughly checked by a human being.
Once that person is satisfied with the result, the file becomes a
concordance file that can be used as in 1). Not an easy task.

3. Manually tag the words to be indexed while creating the content. The
tagging can be done using a specific character style than can then we used
by the program to locate the words (or expressions) and create the index.
Another method can be used to manually tag words in a more complex way as
to produce multiple levels index (you’d need to make multiple tagging with
categories). But this can become a very long and demanding task.

4. Yet another way would be to read the document once layed-out and
"extract" the index that way but this seems to me a horrible way to
accomplish an index!

There seems to be no real easy way. Provided some upstream preparation, the
computer can help diminish the hard work.

Wish you all a great week-end!

Louis






> Greg
>
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