On Fri, Jun 20, 2014 at 12:15 PM, John Jason Jordan <johnxj at comcast.net> wrote:
> On Fri, 20 Jun 2014 15:58:51 +0200 (CEST) > pygmee <radar.map35 at free.fr> dijo: > > >the days we will have a search engine that : > >1. check in all the document > >2. check for character styles > > > >it will be very easy to do this. Right now we are missing both. Some > >might be done in python page by page and frame by frame or search in > >the source in which object a world with particular "invisible" car > >style is applied, make a list of it and then check with the API in > >which page they own. > > Having written and published numerous textbooks, and having been a > student where I needed to use an index, let me point out that a good > index is not a mere afterthought. Here are some things to consider: > > 1) Nesting. This means making subtopics under a larger topic. If you do > want nesting, then each subtopic needs to have its own individual > entry, with a reference to the larger topic, e.g., "see <larger > topic>." > > 2) Main entries. Sometimes a term will appear in numerous places in the > book, but there is one place where the term is first defined for the > reader, or where the discussion is the most complete. I used to bold > the page number(s) for the main entry, but you could do italics or some > other scheme instead. And if you do this, tell the user what the bold, > etc. means with a comment at the start of the index. > > 3) Cross references. These are entries that say "See also." > > 4) With indexes, more is better. Nothing is more frustrating to the > reader than trying to find something in a book and the term is not > listed in the index. This means not only should you make an entry for > everything that you think a reader might need to look up, but you also > need to duplicate the entry under other terms that the user might use. > > 5) I have never found an indexing tool that did not require at least > a little manual cleanup after the index was created. > > The last time I needed to create an index for a book laid out with > Scribus I was fortunate in that almost all the text was in one story. I > copied the text in that story and pasted it into LibreOffice Writer, > then manually went through the Writer document and forced page breaks > at exactly the same places as the pages broke in Scribus. Having done > this I could use the LibreOffice indexing function, which offered me > most of the above features. When I finished the index (which Writer > places at the end of the text) I made some manual edits, then copied > and pasted it into Scribus as a separate story at the end of the book. > > If you want a rudimentary indexing tool for Scribus it might be possible > with a script. I can envision a script that copies a selected word in > a text frame, pastes it into another text frame at the top of the frame > (so you can see it easily, bearing in mind that the index text will > quickly overflow its frame). Then the script can add a tab at the end of > the pasted entry, insert the page number, then move to the beginning of > the entry and enter a line feed and move up to the new blank line so > you'll be ready for the next entry. When finished you can copy and paste > the entire index into a Writer document and sort it, plus make other > manual edits as desired. Writer can sort text by line, so it is not > necessary to use Calc or a Writer table for the sorting. > > If someone wants to embellish the script it could have an option to > bold or italicize the page number for main entries and an option to add > "see also" instead of a page number. Nesting might be more difficult to > script. > > Another script could sort a story on a line by line basis, eliminating > the need for a LibreOffice detour. > > A script such as I envision above should not be difficult to implement, > but a true indexing tool would have the ability to change the page > numbers if the entry moves to a different page. In other words, you'd > have to be sure you used the script only after you were sure that there > were going to be no further edits to the book that might alter the > pagination.. > > It might also be possible to create a script that would generate an > index by searching for a specific character style. For example, I could > create a character style called Index_entry, then go through the book > and apply it to every term that I want in the index. When I have > finished I can use the script, which would search the entire work and > generate the index in a separate frame. If you want the capability of > having main entries you could create two character styles; one for > regular entries and one for main entries, so the script would bold or > italicize the page number when it finds a main entry character style. > An advantage of this approach is that if the page numbers change you > can just regenerate the index, although you'd lose any manual edits to > the index. > > Yet another option might be to create a separate indexing program that > would work on a PDF file. I dont know if such programs currently exist, > but if so they are probably not free and open source. Note, however, > that if you index based on a PDF you'd have to be sure that you didn't > outline any fonts when exporting from Scribus. An advantage of a > separate PDF indexer is that it could be used on any PDF file, not just > PDFs created from Scribus. This would increase its popularity, and > concomitantly the number of potential developers. > > I offer the above just as thoughts for further discussion. It would be > cool to have an indexing tool for Scribus, even if it is not as fully > capable as we might wish. I learn so much from this ML. Thanks for taking the time to elaborate John! Cheers, /Kunda -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.scribus.net/pipermail/scribus/attachments/20140620/79258c6a/attachment.html>
