The PNW chapter met for a full day of programming on Saturday, September 14, in Vancouver, Washington. In one of the sessions Angela Howard demystified “Embedding Index Tags in XML files” by demonstrating her approach. Angela explained that the publishers create proprietary XML and provide the syntax for the index tags which she embeds. The publisher also includes a program that creates a PDF file which generates an index with active links from these embedded index tags. Angela made sense of this process by showing us how the index tags are embedded in an XML file. She saves time by using macros to insert the standard syntax for the index entries.
Before Dave Ream’s passing, Angela used IXML Embedder. Since then, she has been doing the embedding without software but has recently began to explore Index Manager. She hopes that this program will soon be able to handle all the different “flavors” of XML.
Angela also presented on “Technical Indexes with a Structured Approach.” Drawing on the approaches of Fred Leise on structured indexing and Kay Schlembach on metatopics, Angela explained granularity and her process of creating a high-level map of the book’s content as a security blanket to guide her as she drills down to the more specific levels of details. She paid special attention to nitty-gritty aspects of technical books, such as acronyms, gerunds, classifiers, and symbols.
The PNW chapter is grateful to Angela for these excellent, informative presentations.
Are slides of the presentation available?
I would also be interested in Angela Howard’s slides from the technical indexing presentation. Thanks!