Best Indexing Tool for FrameMaker?
Hedley Finger
hfinger at handholding.com.au
Wed Sep 3 20:10:09 PDT 2008
IXgen is idiosyncratic but offers many functions to help you get going,
e.g. making automatic entries for all headings which you can then edit
to make proper entries. In view of the many headings in user guides,
etc. and the invariable chunking into short topics, this can help you
produce a high quality index quickly. It also does el neato stuff like
producing a special table in a FrameMaker document in which you can edit
the marker content, then write it back to the markers in the source
document. Multiple entries in a single marker can be written back as
multiple markers each with a single entry. This allows you to produce
an editing document sorted alphabetically like the compiled index --
great for editing after proofreading -- or by page order -- great for
checking whether each page has been adequately and relevantly indexed.
Don't be put off by the clunky '50s user interface. It works well and
is reliable.
EmDex shows a real time view of a sorted index for all entries in a book
and is ideal for editing a compiled index. For example, you can edit a
main entry and all affected markers are updated on the spot. Or it can
help you augment the entries you completed initially with IXgen based on
headings with further entries to body text.
Index Tools Pro lets you embed index entries in running text so you
don't have to open the Marker dialogue but just type them in place. It
uses conditions to hide them. When the time comes you can convert all
entries in a book to proper markers. You can also remove the embedded
entries and restore them from the marker content. (IXgen let's you do
this but in a less friendly way.)
IndexXref is a tool that produces clickable links to the target entries
of cross-references. Handy when you are producing a PDF and want
readers to be able to jump from the non-preferred to preferred entry
while viewing a PDF on screen.
The plethora of index add-ons should be alerting Adobe to the necessity
of producing a more professional plug-in or shipped-with-product
indexing functionality along the lines of Sky Index, Cindex, MacRex,
etc. Hey, they could even make it an optional (highly priced) add-on,
and they WILL come!
Regards,
Hedley
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