[docbook-apps] Re: Indexing

[Norman Walsh <ndw at nwalsh dot com>]

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/ Michael Day <mikeday@yeslogic.com> was heard to say:
| We develop Prince, a tool for printing XML by applying CSS, and have been
| developing a CSS stylesheet for DocBook to include in the next release.
| This will allow you to convert books written in DocBook XML into PDF files
| or PostScript output, without using XSLT or XSL-FO.

I'm not sure I see why that's a particular benefit, but ok :-)

| However, currently Prince ignores <indexterm> elements, and they do not
| appear in the printed output. We are considering adding an indexing option
| to Prince which would generate output like the following:
|
| <index>
|     <primary>
|         <term>XML</term>
|         <page>12</page>
|         <pages>15-19</pages>
|     </primary>
|     <primary>
|         <term>SGML</term>
|         <secondary>
|             <term>XML vs.</term>
|             <page>17</pages>
|             <pages>30-34</pages>
|         </secondary>
|         <secondary>
|             <term>popularity of</term>
|             <page>35</page>
|         </secondary>
|     </primary>
| </index>
|
| This output could be then transformed using some simple XSLT into
| appropriate markup and included at the end of the DocBook file for
| subsequent printing.
|
| Does this sound like a good way to go? Does anyone here have any
| experience with other methods of producing indicies from DocBook?

If you actually can resolve the page numbers before you generate this text,
I'd be tempted to generate DocBook index markup directly:

<index>
  <indexentry>
    <primaryie>XML, 12, 15-19</primaryie>
  </indexentry>
  <indexentry>
    <primaryie>SGML</primaryie>
    <secondaryie>XML vs., 17, 30-34</secondaryie>
    <secondaryie>popularity of, 35</secondaryie>
  </indexentry>
</index>

But any markup you generate would probably be better than none. Note,
that you might also want to consider handling the significance
attribute on indexterms. And if you do generate DocBook indexentry
markup, and you can easily generate links back to the original
locations, that'd be cool too.

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

- -- 
Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com>      | Imagination is the one weapon in
http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/ | the war against reality.--Jules de
Chair, DocBook Technical Committee | Gaultier
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