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[Cross-posted to copyediting-l and techwr-l; apologies if you see it twice]
I'm having a problem with indexes created in PageMaker, and had no luck
finding anything related to this on the Adobe Web site. (Possibly just a
case of me not being able to figure out the language used by their search
engine, so feel free to point me to the appropriate url if you've found
anything useful in their knowledge base in previous searches on this topic.)
I recently used PM 7.0 for Windows 2000 to update a user manual originally
produced (about a year ago) in PM6.5 for Windows 98. In adding some new
sections and revising the descriptions to match the new interface, I found
it necessary to update some of the old index entries and add a few new ones.
Unfortunately, some of the newly added entries aren't appearing when I
regenerate the index, and others are appearing with the correct starting
page but not the correct end page. I solved some of the problems by editing
the entries in the "Show Index" dialog box rather than in the story editor,
but other corrections (e.g., moving the tag for an index entry because its
host paragraph moved) can only be done in the story editor.
My workaround for the moment (deadlines'r'us!) has been to manually insert
the recalcitrant entries in the generated index rather than fixing the index
tags (the tags themselves look fine in the tag editor), but obviously this
is a disaster for subsequent maintenance of the manual: the manually
inserted text will be lost each time we regenerate the index. So until I
figure out the problem and can solve it, I'm keeping a paper copy of the
manual inserts; when I know what's wrong, I'll update the index properly.
Note: I haven't tried a "diagnostic recompose" because the document doesn't
seem to be corrupt in any other way and the previous set of index entries
(created in PM6.5) seem to be working fine.
Any thoughts on the source of the problem and possible solutions?
--Geoff Hart, geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
Forest Engineering Research Institute of Canada
580 boul. St-Jean
Pointe-Claire, Que., H9R 3J9 Canada
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