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How to make an automatic word index?

Posted: Wed Oct 04, 2017 11:02 pm
by bpkantor
I am just completing my dissertation. It is based on an ancient Greek text of about one thousand words, most of which are cited in the dissertation.

I would like to have a Greek word index, in which each of these Greek words is listed in alphabetical order in the back of the book, with a page reference for EVERY time it is mentioned in the dissertation text. It seems like there should be an easy way to do this automatically since I am literally wanting to index certain words exactly as they are spelled with no variation. Is there any way to do this in Mellel without having to manually mark every instance of each word?

Re: How to make an automatic word index?

Posted: Thu Oct 05, 2017 2:11 pm
by Bulow
It seems a fairly obvious and modest demand, but I do not see that Mellel 4 will do it. Even if you go through the lengthy process of marking up 1000 words, the index will apparently refer to pages only, not lines, and will not tell if a word occurs several times on the same page. I'm afraid you will have to make your index manually.

Re: How to make an automatic word index?

Posted: Thu Oct 05, 2017 5:11 pm
by bpkantor
So I actually figured out how to do this. Good job Mellel on making sure there was a way to do this...awesome!

1) Create an index specifically for your words
2) Enter all your words in the left index pane as index records
3) Select Insert > Index > Quick Index
4) Choose each record in the list of index records, then type in the word you want it to mark all of them in the document and click "mark all", after that, do it for the next word and so on

So obviously it doesn't automatically mark them all just after step 2, but you only have to do step 3 and 4 to get the result I wanted.

Re: How to make an automatic word index?

Posted: Fri Oct 06, 2017 7:21 pm
by Bulow
I followed your procedure and indexed a very short Greek text. Your are right, it is extraordinary what this function will do. I especially liked the possibility to index words under another form than the one written - so necessary with Greek where οἴσω must be indexed under φέρω and so forth. But did you find a way to have the index show if a word occurs several times on the same page? Or to indicate lines on the page? If, as you say, you have about 1000 words, that will be a couple of pages, so the index will just show whether the word occurs on page 1 or 2 or both. Not terribly useful.

Re: How to make an automatic word index?

Posted: Sun Oct 08, 2017 9:50 pm
by cvc
Mellel has all the potential markers to make a useful textual index in Framemaker style, but I have been told that only page reference locators made the cut for the initial 4.0 version, but others could, and would, be added later: perhaps we can hope for sections, paragraphs and line numbers.

Charles