Idxtools

Version 0.0.4b

Contents

• Introduction
• What's new
• Features
• Examples
• Documentation
• Requirements
• Download

Introduction

Idxtools is a suite of tools to assist in the productions of indexes. It is primarily aimed at indexers working from existing material such as printed proofs.

The central concept behind Idxtools is the file format used for the indexes. All the programs understand this format and the sorting program produces its output in the format enabling a edit-sort-check cycle.

Typical use:
The indexer enters headings, subheadings and page references into a text file (using a format similar to real indexes) in any order.

The text file is then passed through a program which sorts and merges all the headings, subheadings and page references as appropriate. The output of this program is in the same format as the input thus new entries can be added and the file passed through the program again.

When the index is complete, the text file is passed through another program, which converts the idxtools format into a format suitable for a word processor.

Final output can be produced in plain text, RTF and HTML.

What's new

Version 0.0.4b

• Windows installer actually works.

Version 0.0.4a

• Windows installer includes files missing in 0.0.4.

Version 0.0.4

• New HTML documentation format generated from DocBook sources.
• idxsorter 0.0.4
  • Includes an embedded Scheme interpreter.
  • Scheme based configuration files.
  • Uses Scheme function (generate-key) for key generation so idxkeygen is no longer required.
  • New option (--letter-by-letter) for ordering entries in letter-by-letter order.
  • New options which are the opposite of existing options: --merge, --hide-keys, --word-by-word.
• idxsort 0.0.2
  • Updated to work with idxsorter 0.0.4.

Version 0.0.3

• Added support for accented characters.
• idxsorter 0.0.3
  • New command line option --page-order to specify sort order of different types of page ranges.
• idx2txt 0.0.2; idx2html 0.0.2; idx2rtf 0.0.2; idxkeygen 0.0.2
  • Handle accented characters.

Older news

Features

• System independant file format supporting:
  • headings
  • unlimited depth of subheadings
  • bold and italic formatting
  • page references (plain, bold and italic)
  • see and see also cross reference
  • flexible notation for changing sort order
• Automatic sorting and merging
• Conversion to 3 different formats
  • text (retaining or discarding formatting)
  • Rich Text Format (RTF) for importation to word processors
  • HTML
• Word-by-word and letter-by-letter sorting

Examples

• Example 1
  • Input
  • HTML output

Documentation

The users' manual in HTML is included in the distribution.

Requirements

• Using
  
  • Perl
    Perl versions 5.004 and 5.005 work. Perl 5.001 and lower do not.
• Compiling
  All the above plus...
  • C++ compilier
    egcs 1.1, gcc 2.95.2 and HP's aCC A.0.1.12 are know to work.
  • GNU Guile. Available from http://www.gnu.org/software/guile/. Version 1.4 is know to work.
  • Standard unix development tools
    Make, sed etc.
• Modifying
  All the above plus...
  • bison
  • flex
  • automake
  • autoconf
  • GNU make
    Get these from http://www.gnu.org/

Download

The software is released under the terms of the GNU GPL version 2.

Get the source code: idxtools-0.0.4b.tar.gz

Get a precompiled binary for Win32 platforms (Windows 95, 98, ME, NT 4.0 and 2000): idxtools-0.0.4b.exe
Please read the installation instructions.