[OS X TeX] Indexes

[William Adams]

On Friday, December 16, 2005, at 08:35 AM, Simon Spiegel wrote:

> coming near the end of my thesis, I started thinking about creating an 
> index. Now there's of course makeindex et al. but I find the idea of 
> going through 300 pages and add \index everywhere not very attractive. 
> Not only will this take a lot of time, but the tex file will be quite 
> unreadable in the end. I wondered if no one ever came up with some 
> sort of tool which would half-automatize indexing. I can think of some 
> simple GUI tool which would list all terms appearing in a latex file 
> and where you could chose which \index entry should be added for which 
> term (the next thing would of course be that the editor would hide all 
> \index entries…).
>
> I know there are things like jurabib's authorformat=indexed which 
> automatically creates an index for quoted authors but this doesn't 
> help me a lot because I use bibtex for handling my bibliography and my 
> fimography, and if I quote a filme jurabib will make an index entry 
> for the director although I'd need the film title in this case.
>
> So, how do people handle indexes?

You can't automate the production of a topical index.

You can automate the production of a concordance, which is far less 
useful, which is what you're describing in the latter part of your 
first paragraph.

Adding index terms doesn't make .tex source unattractive, indeed, I 
find it helps one in understanding related concepts and makes for a 
better presentation.

The index for _The LaTeX Companion 2nd Edition_ was prepared by a 
professional indexer from a .pdf of the text run out w/ line nos., 
using said line nos. as locators. Once the index was compleat and 
approved, the indexer dumped it out in line no. order. Frank Mittelbach 
then went through his entire set of source documents and up-dated the 
index entries so as to produce what the indexer had created. It is left 
as an exercise for the reader to track down a copy of both editions and 
compare the automatically-generated index in the first with the 
professionally done index in the second.

William
(whose wife scored a 98 in the USDA undergraduate indexing course and 
is now working on the advanced course)

-- 
William Adams
senior graphic designer
Fry Communications


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