Index order - Adobe Framemaker

Horace:

Please define "most (more) important". Sort order? Primary versus secondary level index entries? Or?

Cheers & hope this helps,
Riley

Horace,

You can promote/demote the sort order of a specific item by adding an
appropriate value in square brackets after the term in the marker,
e.g. Widgets[aaa] or Widgets[bbb].

Horace,

From my point of view it is a bad job by the author to present the reader multiple page numbers. So the reader has to find out on his/her own what is available at the the different locations (or what the author thought was most important).

Instead I recommend to be more precise in index terms wording, so that in the end there is exactly one target page for each term.

BTW, this approach also suits online versions of an index better than a list of links.

- Michael

Thanks to all.

Hi, Horace:

If you want to differentiate the appearance of an index entry that the author defines as more important, from others for the same source topic, but you don't want to change its alphabetic order, you can use a custom index marker for those entries.

To create a custom index marker. in the Special > Marker window, scroll to the bottom of the Marker Type list and choose Edit. Name your custom marker; in this example, we'll use "Important."

Insert this marker for the important entries, then generate the index.

In the reference page view of the generated index, look for the page named "IX (n of n)" in the center area of the status line. ("n of n" represents "page number of total references pages in this file")

On the reference page, click in a line that contains <$pagenum>; this building block creates the page number for entries. Look in the tag information area, the left end of the status bar, to identify which marker type you've selected. "IndexIX" indicates that the current selection is for the the standard Index entry. "ImportantIX> indicates that the line is for your "Important" markers.

Type a character format building block in front of the <$pagenum> building block. For example, to assign an italic appearance to the page number of Important markers, type <Emphasis>, the default FrameMaker italic character format.

Save, then regenerate the index switch back to your source document or book, and regenerate the index, to see the Important markers stand out from the others because of the character format.

You can find information in FrameMaker online help or the manual for creating custom markers and character formats.

HTH
________________
Regards,

Peter Gold
KnowHow ProServices

Peter, thanks

You're welcome, Horace.

I Just noticed that I omitted one step. The line

Insert this marker for the important entries, then generate the index.




should be

Insert this marker for the important entries, then, redefine the "Include
these markers" list in the index definition dialog box to include both
"Index" and "Important" markers, so that when you generate the index,
both types will be collected in the generated index.




I hope this didn't cause you confusion.

Let us know how things are working for you.
________________
Regards,

Peter Gold
KnowHow ProServices