Creating an Index

There are professional indexers in the world. Their work can dramatically increase the quality of a book. Conversely, a poor index can cause a lot of reader frustration. So assuming you do not aspire to be a professional indexer, we'll leave you with perhaps the most useful advice a professional indexer is likely to give you to create a decent index: pretend you're a reader.

Stepping into the reader's shoes helps you anticipate what information the reader will want to find in the index. If a section in your document or book contains important information on creating a file, which words might the target reader look for in the index to get to that information? "Creating a file" is an obvious choice. But might they also look under the word "File"? What about "Generating"? "Adding"? "Starting"? Or what about "Document" in addition to "File"? Or even more specifically , "Text document" or "Spreadsheet"? The index terms might not even appear in the text of a document or book.

The index entries you insert are up to you. But looking at your index from a reader's perspective helps ensure that the index will be more useful than it otherwise would be.

Marking Index Entries

For Writer to generate an index with related page numbers , you must mark the items you want to index right where they appear in the document.

  1. Select the text you want to use as the index entry. You can also just click inside the word you want to index.

  2. Choose Insert > Indexes and Tables > Entry.

  3. In the Insert Index Entry window, select Alphabetical Index in the Index field.

  4. Set the remaining options for the entry. Use Figure 9-24 for guidance.

    Figure 9-24. Making index entries

    graphics/09fig24.jpg

  5. Click Insert. The Insert Index Entry window stays open for you to mark other index entries in the document.

When you insert an entry, the selected word gets a gray background (if View > Field Shadings is activated).

Note

You can also prevent partial words from being marked ; select Whole Words Only.


Inserting an Index Into a Single Document

Previewing TOCs and indexes

When you insert indexes and tables of contents, select the Preview option in the lower right corner of the Index tab, in the Insert Index/Table window. You'll see how the TOC or index will look with the current settings.The preview window is shown at right.

graphics/09inf11.jpg

Use this procedure for inserting a table of contents into a single document rather than a master document. The procedure for inserting a table of contents into a master document follows this one.

You don't have to insert all your index entries before you generate an index. You can go back and make additional entries, then update the index.

  1. Click in the document where you want to insert the index.

  2. Choose Insert > Indexes and Tables > Indexes and Tables. In the Insert Index window, select Alphabetical Index in the Type field.

  3. Set the options in the Index tab. Use Figure 9-25 for guidance.

    Figure 9-25. Setting index options in the Insert Index window

    graphics/09fig25.jpg

  4. Set options in the remaining tabs. If you need guidance, Inserting a Table of Contents on page 334 contains similar information. Click OK.

All parts of an index have their own paragraph formats you can modify. Click in a line of the index, and the name of the style is highlighted in the Stylist under paragraph styles.

Using a Concordance to Help Create an Index

If you're creating an alphabetical index as shown in Figure 9-25, you can use a concordance, an extra file with guidance for how to create the index.

What It Is

It's a way of setting up ahead of time how you're going to index anyway. Let's say that you're indexing a cookbook that has grown out of your fabulous collection of brownie recipes.

Every time you come across a particular bread recipe, then, you probably want to index it:

 bread:sourdough bread:banana 

and so on.

And since people have different opinions about whether banana bread is really cake or bread, you'll probably want a few things to show up in both, as well as just making lots of cake entries:

 cake:banana bread cake:eating it too 

It's also nice to be able to set up a bunch of alternate phrases to be indexed every time the main phrase appears. Let's say that you're writing a cookbook for sales in the US and are using the term "apple crisp" for a baked apple dessert with sugared oatmeal topping. You know everyone west of the Mississippi talks about apple crisp, which is right and proper. However, people east of the Mississippi talk about "cobbler" and since you want to sell books everywhere, you figure you should index both "crisp" and "cobbler". Ditto on "hot dishes," which are also known as casseroles. You can use the concordance to set up a mapping between cobbler and crisp, and also a mapping between hotdish and casserole.

How It Works

We created a small recipe book and a concordance for its index. Figure 9-26 shows the words that were in your recipe book and mentioned in the concordance for indexing.

Figure 9-26. Words in the example recipe book that were picked up by the concordance, and words not in book that were also indexed

graphics/09fig26.gif

Figure 9-27 shows the concordance and the generated index, and how the concordance affects the index.

Figure 9-27. Concordance and corresponding index with key connections highlighted

graphics/09fig27.jpg

The actions taken based on the concordance include:

  • The term hot dish was found and turned into casserole , and made into a subentry of hot dishes . It was also listed simply as hot dish for people who don't know what a casserole is.

    Note

    If you're expanding your index, it would also make a lot of sense to simply set up the concordance to find hot dish in the book and index it as casserole and as hot dish as main entries, not subentries.

    graphics/09inf12.jpg


  • The term banana bread was found and subindexed under dessert breads .

  • The term apple crisp was found and indexed as apple cobbler . The term apple crisp was also subindexed as apple crisp , under coffee cakes .

Terminology

If you want to create one in this procedure, you'll need to know the following terms.

  • Search term The text you're looking for in the document and want to enter a related index entry for.

  • Alternative entry The text you want to put in the index itself.

  • Key1 and Key2 The first and second level entries, like bread:sourdough .

  • Match case The system will consider identical words with different case as different words. If Bread is a search term, the concordance will ignore bread .

  • Word only The search term should be found only when on its own. If you select Word only, bread will be found but breading won't.

Selecting or Creating a Concordance
  1. To use a concordance, select Concordance and from the dropdown list in Figure 9-25 and select Open or Edit.

    graphics/09inf13.jpg

    If you select Open, a window will prompt you to select an . sdi concordance file.

    If you select Edit, you'll be prompted to enter a filename. Then the Edit Concordance File window will appear, shown in Figure 9-28.

    Figure 9-28. Creating a concordance file for generating an index

    graphics/09fig28.jpg

  2. Make the appropriate entries, then click OK.

To edit it later, select Edit from the concordance dropdown list in the Index and Tables window.

graphics/09inf14.jpg

To stop using it, deselect the Concordance option.

Inserting an Index Into a Master Document

  1. With the master document open, make sure Navigator is open (press the F5 key), and toggle to the master document view in Navigator.

  2. In the Navigator window, select the last file of the master document.

  3. In Navigator, click and hold down the Insert button, and choose Index.

  4. Set the options for the Index. See the previous section if you need help setting options.

  5. Click OK.

  6. If you want to move the index to a different place in the master document, select the index item in the Navigator (master document view), and click one of the Move buttons to position the index where you want.

All parts of an index have their own paragraph formats that you can modify. Click in a line of the table of contents, and the name of the style is highlighted in the Stylist under paragraph styles.

Formatting and Editing an Index

The principles and procedure for formatting and editing an index are the same as that for formatting and editing a table of contents. See Formatting and Editing a Table of Contents on page 339.

Updating or Deleting an Index

The procedure is the same as that for updating a table of contents. See Updating or Deleting a Table of Contents on page 342.

Note

With indexes but not tables of contents, you have to be careful what you select. You can't select the final carriage return of the generated index or you won't see the Remove Index option. The figure at right shows the correct way to select an index in order to delete it; the dark area shows what should be selected; note the final line is partly light, showing it's not selected.

graphics/09inf15.gif


Tips for Troubleshooting Indexes

Indexes never end up perfect the first time. In order to fix an index, you really should fix the index entries rather than editing the index itself, then update the index. Unfortunately, there's no streamlined way to jump from an index item to the index marker in the document to fix it. You have to hunt and peck through the document(s), which can be really time-consuming . Use the following tips to help with the troubleshooting process.

  • Choose View > Field Shadings. This shows the gray background of index entries.

  • To locate index entries in a document, use the Navigation tool. (Click the little dot button at the bottom of the vertical scroll bar, click Index entry, and use the up and down arrows above and below the button to jump to the previous or next entry.) If you click the lower arrow to move to the next entry, the cursor is in the perfect position to use the next tip.

    graphics/09inf16.jpg

  • You can click in an index entry and choose Edit > Index Entry to bring up the Edit Index Entry window (Figure 9-29), which lets you change, delete, and move to previous and next index entries.

    Figure 9-29. Troubleshooting an index

    graphics/09fig29.jpg



OpenOffice. org 1.0 Resource Kit
OpenOffice.Org 1.0 Resource Kit
ISBN: 0131407457
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 407

flylib.com © 2008-2017.
If you may any questions please contact us: flylib@qtcs.net