Indexing tools

[Lori Lathrop <76620 -dot- 456 -at- COMPUSERVE -dot- COM>]

In response to Tamara Peters (INTERNET:1455 -at- MN2 -dot- LAWSON -dot- LAWSON -dot- COM),
who asked:

> [stuff deleted]
> Does anyone out there have any experience with tools such as Cindex,
> or with very large cross-volume indexes in MS Word?

Tamara -- My guess is that you spoke with Dave Ream at the Leverage
Technologies booth.  Leverage Technologies handles corporate sales of
CINDEX (developed by Indexing Research, 100 Allens Creek Road,
Rochester, NY 14618 / ph: 716-461-5530 / fax: 716-442-3924).  BTW,
Leverage Technologies offers add-on products for CINDEX.

I use CINDEX to develop indexes for corporate clients as well as for
publishing houses.  Overall, I like it.  I must admit that I'm not
especially fond of the user interface, but CINDEX is definitely a
powerful program.  And, for about $500, it ought to be, right??? :-)

Before I say anything more, I want to make it clear that CINDEX is *not*
an automatic indexing tool, which would produce a concordance rather than
an index.  Also, it does not work within a document as a "tagging" tool
to create an index.

CINDEX is actually "stand-alone" indexing software; *you* create the
entries manually; however, CINDEX allows you to create indexes quite
quickly because it saves you so many key strokes.  For example, if you
want to repeat a main heading, subentry, or page reference, you can
easily do that with a key combination (such as Alt+1) rather than re-
keying the whole thing.  Of course, CINDEX lets you sort in several
ways, and you can override the sorting if necessary.  Also, you can
export the index to a variety of formats; for example, if you're using
MS Word, you could export the index in RTF format and bring it into
Word.

In fairness, since the topic of this message is "Indexing tools," I
should also say that there are other tools besides CINDEX.  (But, IMHO,
CINDEX is the best, especially for indexing software documentation that
contains symbols, which should be indexed.)

I don't want to be accused of advertising any particular software ...
so let me just say that I'll be happy to provide more info if anyone
requests it.

Good luck with your project!  If I can answer any other questions for
you, please let me know.

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Lori Lathrop ----------> INTERNET:76620 -dot- 456 -at- compuserve -dot- com
Lathrop Media Services, P.O. Box 3065, Idaho Springs, CO  80452
Phone: 303-567-4011
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