On Wed, 2010-08-25, Jean Lockwood wrote: > Indexers? Isn't that pretty much computerized now? I'd be happy to > help with that, but I'd probably overdo it as I'd be indexing under all > variations of a topic name.
A human has to make decisions about what terms to index and insert the index entries into the files in appropriate places. The computer then compiles the index with the relevant page numbers. A human then needs to edit the index. One can partially automate the insertion of index entries by developing a concordance of terms and letting OOo use that for a first pass, but the result must be edited to remove excess page references. Also, indexing synonyms is, in my opinion, very important, and a concordance won't handle that. I am, of course, talking about indexing the ODT files for the user guides. We use OOo's built-in indexing tools for this work, not any of the specialised programs that professional book indexers use; I suspect that's what puts off a lot of people from taking on the job. The "moving target" aspect of rapidly changing documents puts off indexers as well, at least those accustomed to indexing after a book is otherwise "finished". Our books are never finished in the usual snse; they simply get published as snapshots every few months as we update them for new releases of the software. Jean -- Jean Hollis Weber Co-Lead, OpenOffice.org Documentation Project --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: authors-unsubscr...@documentation.openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: authors-h...@documentation.openoffice.org
