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Re: Frame Maker deletes my changes when updating the index
Subject:Re: Frame Maker deletes my changes when updating the index From:Stuart Burnfield <slb -at- westnet -dot- com -dot- au> To:techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com Date:Fri, 04 Aug 2006 23:51:59 +0800
** Hi Yoann -
> "continued" at top of columns: I think it is a way to facilitate the
user's
> browsing in the index, advising him that the column he's starting to
read is
> the continuation of the previous one.
Yes, there are at least two situations where this is useful:
- where the character formatting makes it hard to tell apart
main entries from second- and third-level entries
- where there are entries with very many sub-entries, so that
a whole column or even a whole page consists of sub-entries.
> See / See also ref. : I thought they were links to create inside the
> index, without any marker to put in the text.
Think of them as cross-references in words rather than in the
form of links.
"See X" means "Look for index entries under X instead of under
this keyword."
"See also X" means "Look for index entries under X as well as
under this keyword."
> Are the <$nopage> markers just a
way to avoid the delete-all feature when regenerating the index?
Not quite. It means "Create a normal entry in the index, but without
a page number and a link at the end of the entry."
> ...do you have good arguments to convince my boss the page ranges
> are needed, in place of just putting a marker at the beginning of the
> topic, whatever its length?
A page range indicates that the subject is treated continuously,
and not as unconnected references in a topic that's mainly about
something else.
Imagine that hockey is mentioned in passing on pages 18 and 19
and is discussed in detail in a topic on pages 76 to 79. Your boss
would index it as:
hockey 18, 19, 76
If I saw this I would look at pages 18-19 first, because it looks
like a cluster of entries about hockey. If you had indexed it as:
hockey 18, 19, 76-79
... I would look up page 76 first.
> Thank you, and sorry for my English: I'm a stinking-cheese eater!
You're welcome, and your English is fine (although the way you placed
the hyphen indicates that you're an eater of stinking-cheese--if you
wanted to make it clear that you're really a cheese eater who stinks,
you would say "stinking cheese-eater" ;^)
Stuart (likes cheese, the stinkier the better)
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