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Old 02-13-2017, 04:23 PM   #15
Tex2002ans
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Join Date: Jul 2012
Device: Kobo Forma, Nook
Quote:
Originally Posted by SigilBear View Post
In fact, I've thought about creating several separate static indexes, arranged by topic. For example, there could be an index to people's names, another index to place names, etc.
All depends on the book, and the Index you have to work with. (Designing good Indexes are a whole other beast.)

For the most part, I would just keep the Index the way it is... it would save you the most headaches and wouldn't do any harm.

Doing a simple change like going from paragraph form -> indented form is an easy change (and I would recommend for readability):

Spoiler:
Quote:
Spear, depicted on State seal of, California, 247; Idaho, 192; North Dakota, 238; South Carolina, 211, 249; Virginia, 217, 247, 248


to:

Spoiler:
Quote:
- Spear, depicted on State seal of
--- California, 247
--- Idaho, 192
--- North Dakota, 238
--- South Carolina, 211, 249
--- Virginia, 217, 247, 248


The paragraph form is harder to read and doesn't make much sense in an ebook... the paragraph form was really chosen only to save paper.

But going from a single Index into multiple is most likely going to be a much more extensive + harder change. What about author names that were only mentioned because of a book that was referenced? Do you split states into their own Index too? What if the state occurs as a subentry?

A lot of this stuff really just has to be decided ahead of time by the indexer before they begin indexing. Changing the organization in such a major way, while having the greatest of intentions, might make the Index as a whole worse than before.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Jellby View Post
A note of caution, when an index in paper says 354-7, it could be that a single passage that spans the 4 pages refers to the term, or it could be that there are at least 4 different independent occurrences of the term that happen to be in pages 354, 355, 356, 357. The former case would need a single link, the latter four links. Even worse, a single page number could actually hold several independent occurrences of the term, which would require several links... So, if you don't want to keep the page numbers, you'd have to practically redo the whole index.
Yep... and there is no way of knowing without reading the material itself multiple times over. And not every occurrence of the term deserves an Index entry (see the discussion in "Real Page Numbers" thread on Search/Concordance =/= Index).

A single page number is deceptive and can quickly bloat itself to many minutes of work... multiply that by thousands of entries, and digitizing an Index properly in this way quickly expands to WEEKS/MONTHS of work.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Toxaris View Post
The reading application that support ePUB3 can read ePUB2, but not the other way round. So, a kind of mixed form has been created which has parts of 2 and parts of 3 and somewhat works. It is not ideal at all.

The most common approach nowadays is that if you need features in ePUB3, use ePUB3. Otherwise use version 2.
Yep, and I would parrot a lot of what Hitch always says... "There are still millions of older devices out there that aren't going anywhere any time soon."

Quote:
Originally Posted by IronChaim View Post
The lastest version of EPUB (3.1) has an optional spec (http://www.idpf.org/epub/idx/) that might help with your idea. But, a reading agent has to support it (which they're not required) - and sometimes readers already have a 'search' function built in (so slightly duplicating the effort).
Back in 2013, Infogrid Pacific (the company behind AZARDI) wrote this blog post about the EPUB3 Index spec:

http://www.infogridpacific.com/blog/...ndex-spec.html

I tend to agree with the assessment... it is an unmaintainable disaster. (And on top of that, nothing supports it, nor do I suspect anything ever will.)

Quote:
Originally Posted by SigilBear View Post
I was working through a series of InDesign tutorials @ Lynda.com, and, as I recall, their instructions were to generally ignore 2.0 and save as 3.0 instead.
Adobe + many of those InDesign people tend to lean towards iBooks only... and/or making things look ok on the surface (I was absolutely horrified when I saw the code in the Fixed Layout EPUBs out of InDesign, and a nice chunk of my conversions are cleaning up InDesign cruft).

With your books you want to reach the widest possible audience, not locking yourself to a small subset of the market. And you want the books to look good on all devices (and have proper fallbacks), not just look good on iBooks and look like ass on everything else.

Last edited by Tex2002ans; 02-13-2017 at 04:43 PM.
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