Phantom index entries

[Frank Stearns]

On Tue, 1 Aug 2006, Murray Moore wrote:

> FM 6.0p405
> XP Pro Version 2002 Service Pack 2
>
> In my book's index, page numbers are appearing under the Symbols 
> heading; 16, 18, 24, etc.
>
> I traced each of these numbers to its source index marker, e.g. one of 
> the page numbers under the Symbols heading, 34, is the A Year Ago This 
> Month button heading on page 34.
>
> On page 34 I deleted and recreated the index marker. But when I updated 
> the book and the index, 34 continues to display under Symbols.
>
> On page 34 I deleted the index marker. I updated the book and the index. 
> Not only does 16 continue to display under Symbols, but A Year Ago This 
> Month 34 continues to display under the A heading.
>
> Our IT Dept. head suggested I might have exceeded the maximum size for a 
> FM file. I do not think so because I have produced thicker books.

Were the source files perhaps originally created in MS word? We've seen 
such markers sourced in word as having a leading and trailing char 020 -- 
it's a non-printing char, but one that FM sees when the index is 
generated (and thus the entry under "Symbols").

About the only way to check (and fix) is to save the doc as MIF, search 
for the text of the affected markers, then check the MIF statements of 
each affected marker for numerical character values that don't belong.

Delete them (careful not to break the structure of the MIF -- check to see 
what a good marker looks like if you're not sure), save the MIF doc, 
reload into FM to convert back to FM binary form (overwrite the original 
FM file), and regen your index.

The problem should then be gone.

Hope that helps.

Frank Stearns Associates | makers of IXgen(tm) for FrameMaker(r)
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