Sorting: Ignoring periods

[Butler, Darren J CTR USAF AFMC 584 CBSS/GBHAC]

Fred Ridder insisted: >> I'm still not sure I understand why the index
entries use a period in the
first place. I have never seen an index that uses that punctuation 
convention.<<

*whap-to-da-forehead*
I failed to realized that the customer is not generating a true index
(IX) but an alpha list of paragraphs. That resulting list is named
"index" within the document. You'd think the *.APL file extension would
have given me a clue.. ;^) 
Their template has both IX and APL entries in the ref page. 
It's too late in the workflow to go back and add index markers in the
doc; so I guess they're stuck with hand-fixing the APL?

'Thanx Fred, I couldn't see the forest for the trees.

'Thanx also to Peter Gold. That was the right answer, I was asking the
wrong question.

'Thanx to "RickScript" Quatro. Where would I be without duct tape, the
kjv and FrameScript.

'3 style points to Shmuel Wolfson for originality.


Blessings,
DJ

-----Original Message-----
From: Fred Ridder [mailto:docudoc at hotmail.com] 
Sent: Monday, November 03, 2008 10:47 AM
To: Butler, Darren J CTR USAF AFMC 584 CBSS/GBHAC;
framers at lists.frameusers.com
Subject: RE: Sorting: Ignoring periods

Darrenn Butler wrote:

> If changing the SortOrder or the IgnoreChars building blocks won't
help,
> does anybody have any ideas on what else I can do - even if it's not a
> total fix - because I have a customer that's producing very large
> indexes. Finding every out-of-order "Heidi" would be tedious and
> eye-straining.
 
I'm still not sure I understand why the index entries use a period in
the
first place. I have never seen an index that uses that punctuation 
convention. 
 
But assuming that the intent is that *every* index entry ends in a
period,
I would include it in the index specifications on the IX reference page
of
the index file rather than including it in each and every index entry
marker,
since a missing period in a marker (which can happen quite easily) would

result in a second, unpunctuated entry in the compiled index. Just go to

the IX reference page and find the SeparatorsIX paragraph. Add a period 
(or whetever other character you want to use as an entry terminator) 
at the very start of the paragraph, before the separator space. Then
regenerate the index.
 
-Fred Ridder