Re: HTML ToC and Index

["Sandy Harris" <sharris -at- dkl -dot- com>]

"Jessica N. Lange" wrote:
> 
> John wondered "How can I create a "real" HTML ToC and Index?"

Likely the best solution is to go to a richer format such as DocBook
SGML or XML that supports complex structure -- including indexing, a
glossary with tags pointing to it, bibliographic entries, ... -- and
can generate HTML with appropriate links automatically.

http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/

> Have you considered Microsoft's HTMLHelp workshop? Also free; ...

> There are a number of javascript programs for creating TOCs,
> just look up menus or navigation in any of the javascript sites.

Good suggestions.

Another is to use the World Wide Web Consortium's free browser/editor,
Amaya:

http://www.w3.org/Amaya/

which will generate a TOC from headers for any HTML doc, and does some
other neat tricks like combining multiple HTML files into one big doc,
adjusting all the links.

You can also get a TOC from a set of HTML files, e.g.:

http://www.freeswan.org/freeswan_trees/freeswan-1.3/doc/contents.html

and a permuted index of keywords from HTML headers, e.g.:

http://www.freeswan.org/freeswan_trees/freeswan-1.3/doc/perm.html.html  

with some free tools I wrote and that are included in the FreeS/WAN
distribution at the above site.

Those tools are certainly less than ideal. They do the job for me, on
the simple (must work with Lynx text-only browser) HTML that I write
for that project, but they are certainly more in the "quick & dirty"
than the "finished product" category. Also, they rely on various Unix
utilities so users of other OSs would have to do quite a lot of work
to support them. On the other hand, you do get source and a license
that lets you fix or improve them to your heart's content.