Feature Request: line numbers

Feature requests, and in-depth discussions of features and the way Mellel works

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Declan
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Re: Feature Request: line numbers

Post by Declan »

What is unclear to me about indexing (and cross-referencing for that matter) is that if a manuscript has to be submitted in some obscure format like .doc, there appears to be little benefit in doing the indexing (or cross-referncing for that matter) in Mellel. When one exports to rtf, there is no guarantee that the page numbers will remain stable. What advantage is there in an index that points the reader to pages 34–36, when in Word those references show up as 35–37?
Or have I missed some secret way of ensuring that page numbers remain stable.
Of course, there are advantages in putting together the text in Mellel, but I can't see that indexing (and cross-referencing for that matter) can be usefully done there, if the document needs to be submitted in any format other than .pdf
Vaissiere
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Re: Feature Request: line numbers

Post by Vaissiere »

Flo wrote:Indexing is an important feature, of course, and I’d like to see it too, but I am using Mellel in an academic environment and nobody has ever mentioned anything about indexing. So that Mellel is also a tool for "scholars" is not a joke or false, it simply correct. There are scholars that don’t need indexes, and I am not talking about a minority. There are, of course, certain types of publications that need indexes, but how often you need this obviously differs from discipline to discipline. (If something prevents people who I know to work with Mellel, it's not so much the lack of features, but mainly the operating system (Windows) and/or a kind of locked-in situation – most of their peers, including the 'significant others' at academic journals etc., use other word processors.)
In a dream world yes, publishers should do the indexing job. But it is not so. I have written and published with Mellel several books and conferences in my field of History. I always provided the index and I had to export the Mellel file to rtf then to Word for Windows (because or RTL text), to pray that nothing important was lost in the process, and then create the index.

The same for Declan's answer. The idea is now, more often than not, that the author or editor does all the job : I have sent to Brill or Peeters a complete pdf of the books, and the index should be included. That, I can not do in Mellel. That, I should.
nicka
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Re: Feature Request: line numbers

Post by nicka »

Practises vary, and it's true that some academic presses ask authors to do indexes, but often not in ways that Mellel could help with. For example, some publishers send a near-final draft pdf to the author and get him/her to compile an index by hand. My impression is that the most prestigious academic publishers -- i.e. a small group including OUP, CUP, MIT, HUP -- still do their own indexes (or rather, commission specialists to do them).
Flo
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Re: Feature Request: line numbers

Post by Flo »

Ok, ok, now that I am more aware of indices, I see them more often. Still, the need for those seems to depend on the national/language context too. In our context, this was not an issue up to now. But as I said before: This is of course a feature that should be built in. I did not mean to say indices are not used, but to say this depends on what kind of field you are in. Now that I am thinking about it, it's probably a rather tedious task and if I was confronted with it, I'd be glad to have such a feature ready to use. And there is indeed a tendency by publishers to ask the author to do tasks that were usually done by the publishers; sometimes, one is expected to deliver the 'final' book.
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