On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 2:34 PM, Jon <[email protected]> wrote:
> I have been asked by the editor of The Indexer -- the academic journal of > indexers worldwide -- to write a brief non-technical piece about indexing > under Linux; and by 'indexing' here I mean creating the A-Z indexes found at > the backs of books and journals. My impression is that there is currently no > specific Linux indexing software and no projects going on to create any, but > because of the many meanings of 'index' it's hard to search the Web for this > conclusively. Does anyone have any information they would like to share on > book indexing software projects specifically for Linux, either free or > commercial? Respond directly to me if you don't think others will be > interested. > > I will take silence to mean 'No'. > I have been interested in this, and would be very interested if you turn up anything. LaTeX and OpenOffice both use the "inline" method of indexing. This is not much used by professional indexers since it is fiendishly difficult to maintain consistency. It is mainly used by authors who attempt to index as they go. Tools like Refex help a lot on the consistency front, but it is still hard slogging. There are a number of (Windows) programs that are used by professional indexers. I haven't seen any since they are quite expensive (and I don't have a windows machine). I get the impression that they are a modern version of index cards, that is, the index is built more or less separately and then the manuscript is read and each unit (paragraph or section or whatever) and indexed appropriately. Cheers, Alan > Thanks, > > Jon. > > > -- > SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ > Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html > > -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
