Re: Belated introduction: Indexing

Here's the fairly DocBook-Emacs-geek approach that I've used to ease the 
creation of an XML-based index for my last few books:

First, I go through a printout of a draft and mark all the places where I 
want index entries to point.

Then, I use some Emacs macros I've written (see "Adding Index Entries" 
in  http://www.snee.com/bob/sgmlfree/emcspsgm.html#docbook) to add the 
appropriate DocBook indexing tags. I highlight the phrase to add as an 
index entry and press ^Cx, and the phrase gets copied in between the 
inserted index tags. If it's a first level entry, I'm done; if not, I then 
press ^Cy and enter the second-level entry.

 >What we need is a user-friendly app that shows me the markup I need to 
see and hides the >markup I dont.

Here's a somewhat half-assed approach that has worked fine for me: 
underneath  "Adding Index Entries" described above is some .emacs code to 
reset the color of DocBook index tags and their contents. When I'm working 
on indexing, I set them to a color that stands out more; when I'm not, I 
set them to a color that doesn't.

Ideas for more interesting solutions have popped into my head when doing 
this, but anyone who happens to be working on a book index probably doesn't 
have a lot of spare time in their life that month. (Funny how many 
subscribers to this list are published authors!)

P.S. Anyone who's ever done an index should buy Al Franken's "Rush Limbaugh 
is a Big Fat Idiot" just for the index. It has nothing to do with the 
actual contents of the book, but is a hilarious parody of an index.


Bob DuCharme          www.snee.com/bob           <bob@
snee.com>  "The elements be kind to thee, and make thy
spirits all of comfort!" Anthony and Cleopatra, III ii
(NOTE: bobdc e-mail address used only for mailing lists;
please send private e-mail to bob@)