Re: Automatic indexing -Reply

[auerbach@xxxxxxxx (David Auerbach)]

On 08/22/96 at 09:08 PM,
  jenterli@xxxxxxxx (James Enterline) said (in so many words):

 The book I want to index is about 300 pages in 1-1/2 spaced typescript,
 with several footnotes per page. It is a so-called scholarly book with a
 fairly good density of ideas to index. I have Version 4, but it was my
 impression that the commands for indexing are the same in both. Am I
 missing something? Has anyone developed some kind of program to take some
 of the drudgery out of indexing manually using the commands in the manual?

I've done indices a few times though the latest was merely helping a
colleague with a Note Bene index. The purely technical problems are two (or
more, but here's two): 1. out of memory--this is where Xy4 is better, but
still in the sort process is where you can bump into memory limits. It is
useful to reduce the size of the sort field to the minimum necessary.  2.
If I remember correctly indexing notes *AS NOTES* (i.e., indexing problems
................................. 45, 123n) isn't automatic. You have to
fiddle.

Doing a clumsy index is easy. Just do a ci /word/word≪x1≫/ or use the
correct command as the manual suggests. But a proper index (or indices if
your are doing a name index, topic index and citation index, for instance)
probably requires your adding different verbiage after the X1 and also
probably requires sub-entries. The hard work is in the marking up but a
good first step is to mark all the words and phrases that need to be indexed
and then start fine tuning.


--
                     Regards,
                     David

Eats first, morals after
       --Brecht

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David Auerbach              auerbach@xxxxxxxx (David Auerbach)
Department of Philosophy & Religion
NCSU
Box 8103
Raleigh, 27695-8103
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