This is the mail archive of the
docbook@lists.oasis-open.org
mailing list for the DocBook project.
RE: IndexTerm: why not See+ ?
- To: "'docbook at lists dot oasis-open dot org'" <docbook at lists dot oasis-open dot org>
- Subject: RE: DOCBOOK: IndexTerm: why not See+ ?
- From: Peter Ring <PRI at cddk dot dk>
- Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 10:32:23 +0100
- Reply-To: docbook at lists dot oasis-open dot org
A reference to a section number, or, in our case, a clause number,
can be quite useful in addition to or in place of the page number.
It depends, of course, on the conventions and practices of the
dicipline within which you are publishing. For legal texts, there's
a tradition (pre-dating printing!) of refering to clause numbers.
Anyway, the thing is that this is not a _per publication_ decision;
apart from the obvious fact that some output formats shouldn't
include page numbers, within a given rule or regulation, some
IndexTerms should result in an index entry refering to a clause
number, while other shouldn't.
Also, one might want to generate several indices, cf. the
traditional author index in addition to a general keyword index.
In a software manual, one might want a separate command index.
Right now, I think I can determine the best format of a given
IndexTerm from the context (and the output format, of course).
In a broader context, idices are (can be seen as) cases of Topic
Navigation Maps. Has anyone here dabbled with that?
There's a final CD for a Topic Map standard, ISO 13250,
http://www.ornl.gov/sgml/sc34/document/8.htm. Refer also to
http://www.oasis-open.org/cover/gen-apps.html#topicMaps
for links and a bit of history and context.
regards,
Peter Ring
-----Original Message-----
From: Terry Allen [mailto:tallen@sonic.net]
Sent: Friday, October 01, 1999 8:02 PM
To: docbook@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: RE: DOCBOOK: IndexTerm: why not See+ ?
<snip>
It is uncommon to see indices in which there are both page and
section references, let along page, section, and title references.
Normally one sees only one style. So I would be inclined to set
this preference in the style sheet and not in the document markup
(relying on processing). Note that while page numbers are familiar,
handy, and useful for print, you can't use them for an HTML
presentation of the same material, so it's desireable anyway to
set the format in the style sheet so you can have multiple
differing outputs.
regards, Terry