Re: [dita] Indexterm: page ranges

[Erik Hennum <ehennum@us.ibm.com>]

Hi, Eliot and TC:

Eliot Kimber <ekimber@innodata-isogen.com> wrote on 10/04/2005 08:00:11 AM:

> ... for many authors index terms are precisely a marker indicating the
> occurrence of a specific word or phrase at a specific location.
>
> That is, while sometimes index entries are exactly as Erik states (and
> this is why they would normally generate a page range in the rendered
> index) it is not an exclusive, or necessarly even typical, use of index
> markers.

Point taken. As the thread has noted previously, such occurrences of indexable language would be better handled as mentions delimited with <keyword> or <term> rather than with <indexterm> markers. Instead of requiring the writer to provide the term twice as in the following example

For the proper care and feeding of an element<indexterm>element</indexterm>, you usually supply content.

the processing might make use of the inline term for the index:

For the proper care and feeding of an <term>element</term>, you usually supply content.

A mention would never span multiple pages and thus wouldn't require a range.


Thanks,


Erik Hennum
ehennum@us.ibm.com