Quote:
Originally Posted by shalym
"Done properly" would be, IF the author/publisher feels as if an index is something that is needed for the book, then every reference in the index should link to the relevant section of the book.
Same for references to other parts of the book. An example of this would be "see the section on widgets, page 27" in a paper book. In an ebook, it would say "see the section on widgets" and rather than list a page number (which might not mean the same thing across all readers) the word "widgets" is a link.
Shari
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Ah. Well, as I thought (erroneously, perhaps) I'd mentioned, the flaws with that idea are manifold. A short list, if I may:
- Firstly, when you say that the word/phrase (from the index) should link to the section referenced (the target), your assumption is that the publisher has correctly identified the sentence, paragraph, or section where the relevant information is actually located. As we all know, in print layout, the indicator is placed at the first position of the page--essentially, the first position before the first letter of the first word at the top leftmost position of the page. The item being referenced is simply "somewhere on that page." The print reader opens the book, and visually skims the page for the item. However, in an eBook, if you link to that same indicator, the item you're seeking could be 1 screen, 2 screens, or 4 screens away from where that target lands.
- Assuming that the publisher is enlightened, and indicates precisely where the target should land, you then run into the other problem that I thought I'd mentioned (I must have done this somewhere else). If you have ANY item, phrase, sentence, paragraph in the body of the text that is linked to, from more than one entry in the index, then what? You have a many-to-one scenario. So, let's look at that:
You've written an all-encompassing book about dogs. Right? You have a lovely article about Irish Setters. So, in the index, you will find these various entries:
Under I:
Irish Setters
Under S:
Setters, Irish
Under Sporting Dogs:
Setters, Irish AND,
Under Sporting Dogs-->Setters, you'll have:
Irish Setters
However, you have ONE article or entry for Irish Setters, right? Jane comes along, and picks up the book. Curious, she starts thumbing through the Index. She clicks the entry for Sporting Dogs-->Irish Setters.
So, now: how does she get BACK to where she was in the Index? You're thinking, "well, stupid, she hits the BACK button." But not all readers have back buttons.
If you've created the Article, with now 4 inbound links TO it, how does the reader get back where they WERE, before they clicked the outbound link?
This causes issues in both directions. This happens with any type of reference information in a book that may have multiple inbound links. There's no good way to get your reader, reliably, back to where she inended to go. After all, you can't put return links in the single word, right? So, what do you do? The only realistic choice is to put something like this:
[Back to Irish Setters][Back to Setters, Irish][Back to Sporting Dogs-->Setters, Irish][Back to Sporting Dogs-->Setters-->Irish Setters]
...in the body of the book, for each and every piece of text (word, sentence, section, etc.) that has these types of a) inbound links or b) has multiple inbound links from an index or some other resource elsewhere in the book. I think we can all agree that that would be a bit annoying, after a while--right?
More importantly--since arguably, it wouldn't be that hard for the reader to tap TOC, go to the Index entry, and get back to where s/he was--this is ALSO true for cross-referencing inside the body of the book, as well. If you have multiple spots in the book cross-linked to another entry, you have the same exact problem.
If you don't make eBooks for a living, or don't indulge in logic puzzles, or create indices, the "proper way to create indices in eBooks"
sounds simple. It's easy to do poorly.
It's not remotely simple to do correctly.
Hitch