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Re: Speaking of indexing...

Subject: Re: Speaking of indexing...
From: Joanne Sprott <afterwords -at- aweditorial -dot- com>
To: TECHWR-L <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Thu, 01 Mar 2007 18:16:39 -0600

Thanks, Dori. My working partner Sue (also a great graphic designer) and I are a couple of the ones that actually enjoy indexing, but not necessarily the tedious part. We have professional standalone indexing software that takes out most of the tedium. I really feel for those who have to do indexes from scratch using the highly clunky and inadequate embedded indexing features in documentation development software. No one has yet figured out how lovely it would be to make those programs more efficient and flexible. There are a couple of independently-written add-ons to FrameMaker and Word that help make the editing/revising of indexes a bit easier, but "tagging" is still an extra task of the indexing process for me that's independent of index composition. I find that it's actually faster to build a standalone index in my professional software first, put it in page number order and then go through and insert the markers/elements/tags, whatever you call them, as a last separate step. By building the index first, I can see the whole thing and get it structured right so that I don't have to make hardly any, if any, corrections after I've embedded the markers/tags and generated the index the first time.
The big challenge these days, as you illustrated, is writing, and indexing, for single-sourcing situations. More and more of my tech doc clients are having writers work on single-subject or feature modules that are placed in more than one document or type of output (print, web, help systems), which makes the composition of an index in the usual way impossible. A controlled vocabulary based on the actual content of a spectrum of docs seems to be the only way to get the index for a generated document to come out with any consistency. It's an interesting new challenge for us to help folks get something like a quality index (particularly for print versions) with single-sourcing.

We indexers seem to have our own weird mindset that makes us like this part. Most authors/writers don't seem to like doing indexes at all. :-)

Joanne

AfterWords Editorial Services
Joanne Sprott and Sue Gaines
713-252-1945
PMB 113
9597 Jones Road
Houston, Texas 77065
joanne -at- aweditorial -dot- com <mailto:joanne -at- aweditorial -dot- com>
sue -at- aweditorial -dot- com <mailto:sue -at- aweditorial -dot- com>
http://www.aweditorial.com




Dori Green wrote:

I'm just finishing a detailed index for our 50-page ISO-modelled quality
manual. It will take another day of editing and consolidating before it's
ready for use by readers who are not familiar with ISO, and by me to
identify and replace repetitions of information with a reference to its
first instance -- you guessed it, to prepare the entire program for
single-sourcing and paragraph linkages. If I have my way, it will be
translated into html if not xml. But that's another topic and another
fight. At the least, I expect that I will be able to convince my boss to
let me cross-link common information to a single source even if I have to do
it through a mail-merge setup.

Indexing is not my favorite thing upon which to spend time. (...up with
which I shall not put.)

But I do count it in my TW bag of tricks, and I'm thankful that my boss did
agree to let me spend time on it. This one has so far taken almost a week.

The technique to "rough out" the index in MS Word is simple enough; a
temporary typist could have done it while I worked on more challenging
documentation. Oh well. Maybe next time.

My brain is fried in three days of tedium. I could not _imagine_ doing
nothing but indexing for an extended period of time, or as the main focus of
my career. My hat's off to them what does just that.

Dori Green

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^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Create HTML or Microsoft Word content and convert to Help file formats or printed documentation. Features include single source authoring, team authoring,
Web-based technology, and PDF output. http://www.DocToHelp.com/TechwrlList

Now shipping: Help &amp; Manual 4 with RoboHelp(r) import! New editor,
full Unicode support. Create help files, web-based help and PDF in up
to 106 languages with Help &amp; Manual: http://www.helpandmanual.com

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RE: Speaking of indexing...: From: Dori Green

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