Alphabetizing a generated list of Figures or Tables

[Peter Gold]

Hi, Pete:

If I understand your need correctly, you can do it this way:

If your source paragraphs look like this (I used autonumbered tables,
you can use figures):
Table 1:zzz
...content...
Table 2:ccc
...content...
Table 3:www
...content...
Table 4:aaa
...content...
Table 5:nnn

* Use Special > List Of > Figures (or Tables or Paragraphs) they all
extract the paragraph format you specify, in page order .

* Click Set to generate the file, and move the insertion pointer to it.
The result resembles this - no autonumber, page number order:
zzz 1
ccc 10
www 21
aaa 151
nnn 1200

To capture the autonumber ("Figure #, etc.)
* On the reference page of the generated file, type  "<$paranum> " -
without quotes, with trailing space, to the left of the line that
starts  with "<$paratext> <$pagenum>".
* View the generated file's body page again
* Return to the source file and regenerate the file
* The results will resemble (autonumber visible, autonumber order,
page number order:

Table 1: zzz 1
Table 2: ccc 10
Table 3: www 21
Table 4: aaa 151
Table 5: nnn 1200


To sort the list in order of the text that follows the autonumber (aaa...zzz):
* Select the generated text
* Use Table > Convert to Table to create a table with no header rows,
each paragraph a row with cells separated by  ": " (colon+space, no
quotes)
* In each row, select the first through the last cell of the caption
text, and choose Table > Straddle, to merge the caption text cells
into a single cell.
* Type a colon (":") into the empty cell after the table number in the
first row, then select and copy the cell (not just the colon)
* Select-drag down through all the empty cells in the column, and
paste, to fill all the empty cells with a colon.

The result will resemble:
____________________
Table | 1 |: | zzz  |     1
_____|__|_|____|______
Table | 2 |: |ccc   |    10
_____|__|_|____|______
Table | 3 |: |www |    21
_____|__|_|____|______
Table | 4 |: | aaa |   151
_____|__|_|____|______
Table | 5 |: |nnn   | 1200
_____|__|_|____|______

* Click an insertion point in the table and choose Table > Sort
* Choose Ascending on Column 4 (the caption text)
* Click Set to sort the table


The result will resemble this:

____________________
Table | 4 |: | aaa | 151
_____|__|_|____|______
Table | 2 |: |ccc  |   10
_____|__|_|____|______
Table | 5 | :|nnn  |1200
_____|__|_|____|______
Table | 3 |: |www|  211
_____|__|_|____|______
Table | 1 |: |zzz  |      1
_____|__|_|____|______

* Adjust the widths of the table columns
* Create table cell paragraph formats that align page numbers as you
prefer; perhaps merge the caption text cells and the page number cells
so you can create and use tab leaders as you prefer
* Create a table format that has no rulings, and apply it to the table.

The set-up work will take some effort, but, if you have lots of
entries, it may be less than creating index markers for each entry.
The virtue of markers is that you can regenerate the index whenever
there's a change that affects the page and figure-sequence numbers.
The table-sort method is best done after the document set is frozen,
although once it's set up, reapplying it to a newly-generated list.

HTH

Regards,

Peter
_______________________________
Peter Gold
KnowHow ProServices