I think we have to define what we mean by 'real life' here... Most
textbooks and other serious non-fiction books from major publishers
which have indexes at all, have them created from scratch by a human
with a PC, writing down entries in page number order and then sorting
them into alphabetical order. (I'm not talking about in-house computer
manuals here.) Unfortunately, due to one of the archaic traditions which
infest publishing, the author usually has the financial responsibility
to provide an index. Some do it themselves: some do a very good job;
some don't. But -- just as a professional artist is called in to design
the cover -- many authors will recognise their limitations and call in a
professional indexer.
There aren't a lot of us -- maybe 50 in Australia doing more than an
occasional index. But if you want to get an idea of what we actually do,
check out www.anzsi.org. And if anyone's seriously interested in looking
at the kind of software we need and use, there are Windows demo versions
available from
http://www.sky-software.com
and
http://www.indexres.com
Jon.
Alan L Tyree wrote:
This is really just the LaTeX embedded indexing. One of Jon's earlier
posts explained that this is not what "real" indexers do.
I both agree and disagree with Jon. Real indexers do not use embedded
systems. Unfortunately, in real life, the "real" indexer is the author,
and most authors use embedded indexing. It is one of the reasons why
most indexes are so bad. Embedded indexing is very hard to keep
consistent, and most authors know SFA about indexing.
I have fooled around a bit with "semi-automatic" indexing. Instead of
trying to do it all automatically, start out with index entries that
seem suitable for your book (in other words, steal an index from a
similar book). Apply these entries through some form of automatic
indexing.
The main objection to this is that it is just indexing words. This is
true. But, if you look at most "real" indexes, probably 90% of the the
entries _are_ indexing words.
Alan
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