How to export indexes from indesign to epub

[JSWolf]

Not every program/app/Reader in use has a back button. So assuming such is going to break the index for some.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Not every program/app/Reader in use has a back button. So assuming such is going to break the index for some.

Jon, nobody--nobody--knows that better than I. But think of it this way--the alternative is an index that doesn't work worth a s**t. So, the same person that doesn't have a back button isn't losing anything, compared to the alternative. And maybe it's past time for users to demand back buttons or functions on EVERY device. I mean, how long's it been now? 12 full years that there's been massive public support/buyer demand for readers?

ETA: And, hell, if they don't have back buttons, current indexing attempts won't work either, will they, on those devices? So what's the exact loss here?

Hitch

[Ryn]

Just a trip report from my first foray with the LiveIndex script I purchased.

For those who don't want to read through the whole thread to recall what it did again, it's an Indesign plugin that asks you where the Index begins, which entries to include, and what the intended output is (epub or PDF). Then it takes a while to link up every index reference to the top of its page referent.

I have used it on one 4k+ entry index, and this worked really well.

My only gripe with the script would be that it just heaps anchor tags on top of eachother. I'd much prefer it to check for the presence of an anchor and then use that, instead of polluting the document with 20-odd anchor tags in some cases.

Other than that, it's been really worthwhile, so far.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Ryn

Just a trip report from my first foray with the LiveIndex script I purchased.

For those who don't want to read through the whole thread to recall what it did again, it's an Indesign plugin that asks you where the Index begins, which entries to include, and what the intended output is (epub or PDF). Then it takes a while to link up every index reference to the top of its page referent.

I have used it on one 4k+ entry index, and this worked really well.

My only gripe with the script would be that it just heaps anchor tags on top of eachother. I'd much prefer it to check for the presence of an anchor and then use that, instead of polluting the document with 20-odd anchor tags in some cases.

Other than that, it's been really worthwhile, so far.

Meh, while there are some of us (Wait for Jon, aka Wolfie on that topic!) who would whinge about multiple anchors, and for housekeeping purposes, it would be best to regex the dupes to a first anchor, it's still better than doing it manually.

NOW, if I could just get it to go TO the damned item...life would be cool beans.

Hitch

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by Ryn

Just a trip report from my first foray with the LiveIndex script I purchased.

[...]

I have used it on one 4k+ entry index, and this worked really well.

Great. Thanks for the little mini-review.

Did you just run it on a basic Index with page numbers:

Index, 1, 2, 3

or with the different variants of condensed page numbers:

Full, 123–129
Two, 123–29
Single, 123–9

(Many times the tools fail by not detecting "29" or "9" as 129.)

or with footnote "n" (italics/non-italic) + numbers:

Footnotes, 1n, 2<i>n</i>, 3n10

or following pages "f.", "ff.":

Pages, 4f., 5ff.

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I admit I have a healthy skepticism/disdain for those who believe they can teach people to learn better/faster.

Me too, I'm no fan of 99.99% "self-help" genre, but that book is the real deal.

As I said, completely transformed the way I now tackle reading Non-Fiction (and gave me a new appreciation for Indexes).

... If only I "knew how to read" 20 years ago, just imagine how much more knowledge I would've absorbed!

Side Note: If you remember my posts from pre-"Kindle RPN" thread, I was mostly anti-Index-in-ebooks, thought they were bogus, but left them in only for "matching the print book as closely as possible".

Hitch's arguments over the years convinced me Indexes have some purpose.

And then the same year as the famous thread, I actually spent months deeply researching Indexing + recreating an index for a ~1000 page book. Having to dig into the nitty gritty and actually mark-up the document let me see what was going through a great Indexer's mind, and what separates basic concordances (and bad indexes) from great indexes.

Doing all that work let me see the importance of categorization/keywords that aren't directly stated in the text itself.

(And now that I think about it, I still haven't finished recreating that index. If I remember correctly, there were ~5500 entries, I tackled ~4000 "easy" ones [the word was used somewhere within the page], and stalled on 500+ incredibly hard ones.)

Originally Posted by Hitch

What WOULD work for a "real" electronic linked index would be something that actually uses the tags--whether INDD or Word or Bob's Big Word Processor--and places a tag or anchor where the INDD mark is placed. That would work.

[...]

I mean...as a non-programmer and someone who has never gotten "inside" what INDD does (or Word) to that level of detail, when a spot is indicated/marked/tagged as "this index entry goes here," how hard would that be? Does anyone know? It can't simply tag the top of the "page," because that can move, as the file is revised.

The innards are disgusting.

I was digging into it way back during that famous Kindle RPNs thread.

Word uses "XE Fields":

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...2-cda9d14bf073
http://taxonomist.tripod.com/indexing/wordflags.html

, so strewn throughout the text is hidden fields like:

Poodles{XE "Dogs:Poodles"} are known as tiny dogs.

Word then doesn't update the Index real-time, you have to update these fields manually, similar to generating TOCs.

Another frustrating thing is that even Word's own HTML export doesn't do the Indexes, so you have to base everything off the raw XML inside.

And from what I remember, many of the converters/tools don't even handle the Index numbers properly. I haven't tested it in many, many years, but I remember outputting entries like:

Word:

Cats, 100
Dogs, 2
Animals 2, 50, 100

Calibre (?):

Cats, 2
Dogs, 1
Animals 1, 3, 2

#s based on when they appear in the document... not the actual "page numbers".

Originally Posted by Hitch

You'd think that somebody, anybody, would be working on this. (Now I'll find out from somebody here that this already exists. {sigh}).

It might. I have yet to see a properly marked Index though in InDesign itself.

In Word, I've only seen ones I've generated. (In the wild, I've only seen maybe two DOCXs where an author actually used the functionality properly.)

Side Note: The American Society for Indexing has a list of some software:

https://www.asindexing.org/reference-shelf/software/

but as I said previously, probably 99.9% of Indexes are generated outside Word/InDesign, then imported in as plaintext.

And if you're doing Indexes that are:

• mildly complicated
• foreign languages
  
  • Sorting alphabetically becomes a serious issue.
    
  • (Accents treated differently, some "double letters" considered 1)
• "out of the norm" formatting-wise
  
  • Bold/Italic numbers
• Multiple/Split Indexes
  
  • Author Index, Subject Index, [...]

... Word's Indexing tools are... atrocious. They limit you too much, and cannot handle "edge cases".

And I'm betting InDesign's are even worse.

Note on Indexing Pitfalls: This 2008 talk by Joachim Schrod goes through many of the potential issues:

"xindy revisited — multilingual index creation for the UTF--8 age"

He's the creator of xindy, which is a LaTeX package initially designed for (complicated) multi-lingual Indexes.

Things have gotten a bit better since then, back then UTF-8 was still out of the norm... but overall, the Indexing tools still are... bad.

There's probably still a reason why indexers mostly work outside the programs and then submit plaintext lists. :P