Re: indexing markers in FrameMaker--deleting globally

[Joanne Sprott <afterwords -at- aweditorial -dot- com>]

Many thanks to Fred Ridder and Stuart Burnfield for the IXgen 
recommendation for working with FrameMaker indexes. I knew about this 
add-on already, but, alas, I am forced to work this project on a 
Macintosh, and from what I see at the IXgen website, he didn't build the 
program to work with the Mac OS. And I don't have the option to use 
Windows on a Mac or anything--highly customized hardware and software to 
accommodate FrameMaker 6 using OS9 on an OSX Mac.

Oh, and Stuart, I had tried your Find/Change recommendation the other 
day and didn't think it actually deleted the marker box, only made the 
text disappear, but I was working with individual markers then. When I 
tried the Change All option on a chapter, it made all the index markers 
disappear quite nicely, so I shall use this method.

I solve the problem of multiple editing passes to the markers by 
creating the entire index as a standalone document using my professional 
indexing software (fast and easy). Then I have the thing all structured 
the way I want with all the terms consistent. Then I put it into page 
number order and export it to Word, where I change the format of the 
index entries so they look like the marker text (colons between mains 
and subs, etc.). I then go through the doc page by page and paste the 
marker text in. The resulting index is generally perfect or near-perfect 
on the first generation of the index file.

IXgen would still help, but I'll have to wait for a Windows client to 
try that out.

Thanks again,

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
 



Stuart Burnfield wrote:
> **Hi Joanne -
>
> You can find the index markers and change them to 'null', in effect 
> deleting them.
> In the Find/Change dialog box:
>
>    Find: Marker of Type: Index
>    Change: To Text:                         <== leave empty
>
>    [Change All]
>
> I second the recommendation for IXgen. It should more than pay for 
> itself when you come to edit your new index.
>
> Stuart
>
> Joanne Sprott said:
> I'm working a multi-document project where I'm embedding the index
> markers in the client's FrameMaker docs. I'm afraid that most of the
> extant index markers are useless for me (no offense to all you tech
> writers out there, but most of these indexes were left unedited, so lots
> of inconsistencies exist--better to just start over), so I'd like to
> delete them all globally. Is there any way to delete all the index
> markers at once (not just the text inside them, but the markers themselves).
>
> So far, Help indicates that I have to go to each marker in each chapter,
> highlight it and delete it individually. This seems an extremely
> cumbersome process, so, before I give up and do it the hard way, I
> thought I'd ask.
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