[Discussion] Indexing

[Ori Redler]

So I thought of a Mellel solution with automatical search (F&R) and manual decision (Action: enter into Index as -- options). For subentries a pop-up list with main entries should appear, which can be quite long...

Am I too conservative with my focus on case by case decision?

Maria

You could mix the two: initiate adding an index entry and request marking for index other entries. For example, you may choose to mark for index all the instances of a word and its permutations, or you may want to index several different words under a common heading (e.g., as sub under Animals you might want to index any instance of "dog(s)" and "cat(s)".

[Ori Redler]

Professional indexes are usually created using dedicated software. The three dominators in this field are the following:

- Cindex: http://www.indexres.com/
- Sky Index: http://www.sky-software.com/
- Macrex: http://www.macrex.com/

If you decide to add an indexing feature to Mellel I would strongly suggest that you take a close look at the features in these programs.

Best wishes,
Mats Broberg

We took and take...

[Mart°n]

Real-time up-dating of an index will be very processor time-consuming. It would be sufficient to delete an old index and create the new index at the cursor location again.

I think this isn’t a problem nowadays and therefore I really would like to see real-time updating in Mellel for everything (index, ToC, links, references…). Current Macs could update and filter HD video in realtime (sure, the work is done mostly by the graphics card) but updating an index should be easily possible with those (and a little bit older) Macs.
If you enter a new line at the beginning of your document, Mellel has to shift every line of a 500 page document. Updating maybe 10 index numbers per page should not be that much work.

It‘s really a pain, if you write a document, insert a toc and a index, change a little piece of that document and forget to update both. They will be wrong and therefore mostly useless, only to save some cpu-cycles of which we have more than most people needs.

[Marco]

As we are encouraged to express our wildest hopes, I will suggest a feature that I would be most interested in: an ability to mark for index words in Unicode Greek or Hebrew in an automated way. That is, without having to find manually all Greek words.

I think that Unicode character blocks could be used to do that in an automated way. It could be done from the find and replace box, if an ability to search for a certain Unicode characters block were added to find and replace.

I am using here "Unicode character block" according to its use in the "Unicode Checker" application.

It would be great to be able to find all Greek words, and mark them for Index.

Marco

[eleuteruiz]

It would be most useful to have the possibility of setting up a special order for the index other than the alphabetical one.

In my case, I would need to make an index for Biblical references, which as usual has to follow the Bible book order, then chapter, and then verses. It would be nice if one could set it up so that it would automatically create (and update) an ordered index of Bible references.

For people who work with ancient writing systems (like ancient Egyptian or Akkadian texts) it would be then possible to create an index following specific standard order of words in those languages.

[Marco]

Hi Marco,

have you had a look on the feature request "Actions on Find" by Danoz?

http://www.forum.redlers.com/viewtopic. ... d78cebf0e7

This would do what you want and a lot more Vote for it, if you like it!

Best,
Maria

Thank you, Maria. I have now looked at it and liked it.

In fact, it would be part of my wish. The second part of my wish would be an ability for the Find and Replace window to look for certain Unicode chracter blocks. Together, the two feature could do what I had in mind.

Marco

[lbas]

Indexing. Preparing a list of the individual words in a file (concordance) is nothing (Perl does it handily), even as you eliminate obvious words like "a" "an" "the" and so on. Tying an occurrence of a word to a page number is harder as things are always changing. No matter, this is all technical and not a big problem.

But doing the technical stuff doesn't result in an index, not by a long shot. Indexing is an art, and the standard books to educate (in the U.S. anyway) are "The Chicago Manual of Style" current edition and "Indexing Books" by Nancy Mulvany. They sure opened my eyes. And a good index makes a book many times more useful.

I reread parts of "The Nisus Way" recently and was reminded that Nisus had a "visible" text attribute that could be used to show or hide parts of the writing. Also had an empty style, just a dummy that looked the same but allowed you to differentiate stuff to later search on or somesuch. Both seemed useful ideas.

Maria works with Japanese, I'm starting to work with Chinese. In any language you need the possibility to index on things that aren't there literally. And to order the index by any criteria you specify, from a list if necessary. Any computer-generated wordlist will need a world of work to make an index, and you don't want to lose that work if revision becomes necessary.

Hope this is helpful -
Woodson

[mbywater]

What we're talking about here is "embedded indexing" which is only much use if you're using Mellel (or whatever) to produce final camera-ready copy.

Real indexing (and although I've only indexed three books myself, two of which were my own) is another "reading" of the text. It often throws up surprises, even to the writer. The author whose book I indexed recently wrote to say:

I see the book from different angles and emphases, almost, as though I can pick it up and turn it round in my hand, opening small doors in its sides.
Fanciful? Still, I had not expected this. It makes me want to read it,
so must do that for others. I always use indexes, of course, and
sometimes curse them, but had never appreciated what they could do for a book.

Which of course is precisely what one wants an index to do -- to produce, if you like, a meta-text. I think this is a job for, as is traditional, the second-proof stage of production; but of course others' needs may vary. Perhaps basic indexing -- select a word and, optionally, choose what to index it under ("laudanum" might be indexed as "opiates" for example) -- has a place in a WP; the more hard-core indexing, I think, is best left to programs such as Cindex for OS X -- best of breed IMO; just as biblio management is best left to Bookends or Sente.

[ptram]

Ori,

Don't forget range of pages, like in:

Word, 12-14

Also, it would be nice to have something like:

Word, 12 and following

with the "and following" part freely customizable (for example, in Italian it would be "segg.").

Best regards,
Paolo

[catherinehc]

In a large book I'm working on, I'm having trouble keeping track of when I first mention a concept, and when after that it comes up. If I could index the term, the index entry would help me keep track of the idea stream.

[catherinehc]

Thanks, Maria -- I've just spent three days immersed in Scrivener, and indeed it's excellent for what I need.

But it bothers me that Scrivener as well as Mellel (and every other application I've looked at) -- although they offer a hierarchical outline panel within the display -- can't produce output that looks like that. Scrivener at least has a way to condense items with a synopsis; in Mellel I don't see a way to do that.

I've been working on a book in AppleWorks, and finally couldn't handle its problems anymore. But it has spoiled me for other outliners.

When publishers ask for an outline and sample chapters, will they be satisfied with an "outline" without hierarchy? It seems so impoverished without indentation, so much harder to grasp the logic of the idea flow.

I don't have Word on my Mac, and I sure don't want it after what I've heard about it ... but does it put out a hierarchical outline? Is that what publishers are going to expect?

This will be my first attempt at publishing a book. Do you (or anyone else here) have experience with the outline requirement?

[DanZac]

apologize if this has been brought up already, but I haven't seen it—
I'm willing to bet that numerous Mellel users work in ancient texts, so it would be great if Mellel indexing would accommodate this. I don't know how best to implement it, but I would think being able to add "hidden" info on certain parts of text for the indexing would work. Potentially, making some sort of database that mellel uses would also be helpful.

For instance, the book of Genesis may come in with its full name, Gen, or Gen.— all of these would be followed by chapter and verse. the chapter and verse may be separated by colon, period, or comma. Mellel, hopefully, would recognize all of this seemlessly.

Here is an example of how consecutive Hebrew Bible texts may be cited.

Gen 1:1; 5:10; 20:20. Mellel would hopefully allow me to tell it that 5:10 and 20:20 are "Gen" by attaching "Gen" to the chapter and verse.

Just some random thoughts on this

[Timotheus]

Talking about Indexing: someone might want to take a look at iVerbum. It doesn't exactly offer the kind of Indexing Mellel will offer in the future, but as a research tool it might be useful to some of us. The latest version (3.2), which was released two days ago, can also read Mellel files.

[verma]

Talking about Indexing: someone might want to take a look at iVerbum. It doesn't exactly offer the kind of Indexing Mellel will offer in the future, but as a research tool it might be useful to some of us. The latest version (3.2), which was released two days ago, can also read Mellel files.

Looks very interesting! Thank you for the link & info.