[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by Peter Sorotokin

OK, but we'll need to discuss XHTML vs. TEI or XDFX. I am leaning towards using XHTML.

I would prefer XHTML because simpler is usually better.

While I see similarity between title index and keyword index, for practical purposes they may need to be treated somewhat differently (like in p-word). For foreign language dictionaries, title index is going to bloat to the same size as dictionary itself (since definitions a lot of times are as long as the link would be). On the other hand, each individual piece of the dictionary body is already self-indexing, since words go in alphabetical order.

I disagree about the entry length. I looked at the WordNet Mobi dictionary. The average length was at least twice as long as the link.

Also, while the entries of a dictionary are alphabetical, having a list of just headwords without the entries means you can look at and discard more entries at a time. This will make finding a word (with uncertain spelling) faster.

Question: would it be possible to build the headword index into the toc.ncx file? If so, could it behave like an index?

On the other hand, keyword indices have to list every word (since they cannot rely on the document structure), but typically won't be as large (judging by the printed books). Also, in many cases, keyword index includes a short definition for each term, in addition to the link(s) to the book body. From that perspective, keyword indices are more similar to small dictionaries than to the title index.

Peter

A definition would be in the body of the text, not the keyword index. I've never seen a reference title that had an index with definitions. I've seen books with both glossaries and indices, but they were separate entities.