Re: [docbook] indexterm in footnote

[Mike Maxwell <maxwell@umiacs.umd.edu>]

Dave Pawson wrote:
> On 07/14/2009 11:36 AM, Jirka Kosek wrote:
>> But more to the core problem. I think that there is no reason for
>> disallowing indexterms in footnote. Might be it is just unintended error
>> or some legacy stuff. It seems that DocBook XSL stylesheets are able to
>> process indexterms in footnote correctly.
> 
> Speaking against indexterm in footnote on a practical level.
> Given page xxx reference to such a term it seems 'odd' or
> awkward to go searching for the reference and find it in the footnote?
> Index terms are generally to body content, rather than to marginalia
> such as footnotes?
> 
> Just a practical (visual) issue.

I guess I would say that whether something in a footnote is marginalia 
or not is in the eye of the beholder.  It's not uncommon in scholarly 
work to index footnotes, and it's quite common to index endnotes. 
(DocBook doesn't distinguish the two.)

If necessary, one can modify the index page number to indicate that the 
reference is in a footnote, there's an example here:
   http://www.fao.org/forestry/media/16346/1/0/
It's also done in "The Sound Pattern of English", perhaps the most 
famous phonology book ever.  (OK, it's famous among us linguists...) 
You can see some examples in Amazon's "Look Inside":
http://www.amazon.com/Sound-Pattern-English-Noam-Chomsky/dp/026253097X#reader
E.g. in the "Word Index" on pg. 449, 'ability' appears in a footnote, as 
indicated by the 'n' in the page reference '160n'.  Also the second 
entry in the "Subject Index" on pg. 464 for "Admissibility, phonological."

Now whether any means of producing a PDF etc. from a DocBook supports 
marking index items that are from a footnote with an 'f' or 'n', I don't 
know.  I wouldn't be surprised, though, that there's a way to do this 
with LaTeX (we convert our DocBook books to LaTeX using the dblatex 
program).

I also don't know whether it's possible to produce multiple indices, as 
in the Sound Pattern of English example; maybe I could use a 'role' attr 
on indexterm...
-- 
    Mike Maxwell
    What good is a universe without somebody around to look at it?
    --Robert Dicke, Princeton physicist