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gail
Posts: 26
Joined: Thu Jul 05, 2007 2:33 pm
Location: England

Index

Unread post by gail »

Hello - I was just wondering if anyone has any tips on creating a meaningful Index. I'm finding this quite a difficult process, especially since I didn't write a lot of the topics, and a lot of them are there purely to list loads of parameters and things. For example I have a topic called ASCII which lists loads and loads of parameters e.g APPEND BEGINTAG CHECKSEQ etc. So I don't know whether to include all these parameters in the Index, in which case it would be extremely long, or whether just to include the keyword ASCII parameters. It is very difficult because I don't want it to be too long, but then I'm thinking a user might find a parameter like BEGINTAG, and if it isn't listed in the Index, the user might not realise it is under ASCII Parameters. But I have so many topics like this, and the tech knowledge of our Users varies significantly.

I also feel like I'm in danger of recreating the table of Contents and I'm not sure if that is actually a bad thing to do....but if anybody has any tips or processes they go through to create an Index I'd be very grateful to hear about them. Thanks. :)
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Tim Green
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Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Gail,

I would give you the following rules of thumb on this:
  • Don't recreate the TOC in the index but also don't leave things out that you are sure people will look for in the index. If you think somebody might look for it, it should be in.
  • If anything is in a topic that you think people will look for specifically, then it should be in the index -- but only on pages where visiting the page is meaningful. If you guide users to pages where a subject or term is only mentioned you are just wasting their time.
  • Take time to think about alternative terms for the same thing that people might look for. For example, some people might look for "editor", others might look for "text editor".
  • Use the live index (Index tab behind the TOC) to check how your index looks while you work. This will make it a lot easier to avoid double entries that are only a little bit different. (Check the help on indexing for lots of information on all the things you can do with the live index tab.)
  • If you have enough screen space undock the TOC and Topic Options tab while you are working on the index -- this will let you see what you are doing much better.
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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gail
Posts: 26
Joined: Thu Jul 05, 2007 2:33 pm
Location: England

Another Question on Indexes

Unread post by gail »

Thanks very much.
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