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Separate index for names #115
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Do you mean "names of people" or "defined terms" (like definitions)? On 06/22/2015 01:42 PM, kcrisman wrote:
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Both? But originally I meant names of people - one sees that from time to time, especially if it's a "historically focused" text. |
I think this would be a good addition. But I'm after bigger projects during the summer right now, so not a high priority. Maybe there should be some general index mechanism to support multiple indices of any type? If you really need this urgently, we could discuss design and you could author in advance of actual support. |
No, not urgent at all for me - I'm probably already being too ambitious. But one could imagine it being useful for other projects. |
Things like theorems and solutions could be gathered in a separate However, multiple indices, with a separate index for names, requires \index{Euler's theorem} and maybe you can think of additional entries. I have not kept up with the MBX way to index, but it has to map \index[person]{Euler, Leonhard} And the LaTeX output of MBX needs to provide support for the But that takes me to my key point: I can't think of a natural use case Unless I am missing some way to make this feature useful, and do-able, |
(What?! I guess Hardy & Wright isn't relevant, then.) Anyway, I agree this isn't a high-priority feature - I don't need it yet, or probably ever - but I don't understand the rush people always have to close wish list type tickets in projects. It doesn't hurt anyone to have it there, and is a place for people to comment if they have an idea about it. As I said, in this particular case, there are enough "historically focused" texts nowadays that one can imagine it being useful. But if changing this to allowing separate index types and making it super-clear this is wish list allows it to stay around, I have no problem with that. |
Hardy and Wright does not have a real index, only an index As to deleting feature requests: it is not true that all (My H&W is the 5th edition, published in 1989. It may be (And, yes, you can find "algebraic integer" in the TOC, On Mon, 29 Jun 2015, kcrisman wrote:
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My two cents worth on indices:
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Chicago Manual of Style argues against a separate index, even for names (though that would be an OK exception for them). I have student requests for an index of Sage commands. That might be a place where two indices would be disjoint enough to not cause confusion. |
Chicago Manual of Style argues against a separate index, even for names
(though that would be an OK exception for them).
Style manuals can change all the time, and are just that - style manuals.
(I prefer to not use "Mr." for everyone like the NYT.) I just finished
reading a work with a two-part index "by name" "by something else" - Anchor
Books, by a Nobel laureate. Frankly, when style and design get in the way
of communication, we are in trouble. And for some works you can reasonably
expect people to want separate indices by name, or by geographical
location, or by year, or whatever. (Maybe not math books!)
I have student requests for an index of Sage commands. That might be a
place where two indices would be disjoint enough to not cause confusion.
Yes, that would certainly be necessary, though I think that is fine as an
appendix.
or perhaps just to implement multiple index types.
Really, all I think is necessary here is to optionally allow multiple
indices just like there are multiple appendices. Or multiple/multipart
references :) but that has already been discussed elsewhere. Certainly one
could warn authors against this, but for (say) an historical text this
might make a lot of sense.
Also, belatedly I realize just how bad of an example H&W was. Apparently
there is a whole indexing project for that work.
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> Chicago Manual of Style argues against a separate index, even for names
> (though that would be an OK exception for them).
Style manuals can change all the time, and are just that - style manuals.
(I prefer to not use "Mr." for everyone like the NYT.)
There is much to disagree with in NYT style, because it is not
an appropriate style guide for scholarly books. That is why the
CMOS has been the semi-official style guide for MBX from the beginning.
I don't see how a feature request can pass the "common and reasonable"
test if it goes against the CMOS. The reasoning they give for a single
index is quite compelling:
<blockquote>
It is frustrating to hunt for a name or term, only to find you are
in the wrong index. Further, cross-referencing between subjects and
persons is much simpler in a single index.
</blockquote>
A separate list of sage commands (not sure I'd even call it an
"index") sounds useful and does not contradict the CMOS recommendation
(nor does it contradict the reasoning behind their recommendation).
Considering the large cost of having to mark up the index entries in a
way that allows terms to be funneled into separate indexes, and
the small gain (a loss, actually!) in having separate indexes,
it seems clear that there are better places to put development efforts.
David
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The notation list is much like an index, but "in order of appearance," which is a whole lot easier. And also "common and reasonable." |
Thoughts on the MBX for additional indices. An attribute I think it would be nearly trivial to filter at the start of the index creation code for HTML. For LaTeX we use the Still |
I'd like to see some example (common and reasonable) use cases for multiple indices. |
Yes, of course. Nonetheless the types of indices can be quite disparate. I'm not suggesting an index of continuous functions versus an index of discontinuous functions. But an index of names ... I mean, it will be pretty evident that you are searching in the wrong index within about two seconds. And if there are a lot of names, but nowhere near as many as total items, and if you aren't exactly sure of the spelling (or even the name) in the first place, it sure could be useful. Better believe that's happened to me. As for additional index types, the very first book I pulled from the shelf (at home, no math books here) has an index of ancient sources separated into 11 (!) subheadings (the last of which is "Persian sources", and believe me you want this index sub-organized or you'd never find anything, it was pages and pages long), an index of modern authors, and an index of selected topics. (Plus a multi-part bibliography again organized in three sections, the first of which is a list of abbreviations - that is very standard in this field, although its placement within the book varies.) And please don't tell me Fortress is a marginal publisher. Now, I'm not suggesting this is necessarily a super-common use case; the next six books I picked out had just one index, or in one unfortunate case none at all. (But then the next book had two again, same style.) My point is that there could be discipline-specific reasons for having an "index of", and that (as a wishlist item, sure) MBX could support that. In fact, as mentioned earlier, MBX already does support one such - the notation list. Here are a few ideas which actually occur - they are not always called indices, but definitely not necessarily appendices in the sense that they are certainly ordered lists.
In the latter case if one wishes to restrict to mathematics, one could e.g. imagine a book focusing on Euler which, in addition to a normal index and bibliography, had a separate index (with page numbers) directing people to Euler papers by Enestrom number. (Aware of missing umlaut but can't get this Ubuntu keyboard to do it easily, sorry.) In any case, perhaps these are "really" appendices, but I'd say any appendix with an ordered list of "stuff" could count, particularly if it includes page numbers. Whether they are common or not probably depends upon what field you are in. Is a list of historical notes, or technology references, or of other special remarks, an index or an appendix? I really don't know. But it seems reasonable to not want some of one's list-of things to have appendix letters, though as for myself I don't care so much. |
If we do this, we need to be very careful about educating authors to make it clear to the reader that there are now two places where information is located. If the headnote (#1048) is visible, then it can explain this. Cross-references between indices should be allowed and encouraged. |
I think we should be very slow to implement multiple indexes.
Are there really a lot of people who know what they are talking
about and are asking for this? The names need to be a substantial
fraction of the index (so much so that it annoys people who are
not searching for names) before it makes any sense to think about
this. Math textbooks are not on the verge of having that happen.
And then you need a way to mark up an index entry and indicate it
is a name (or whatever else you might want as a separate index).
I really can't see this being anything more than a distraction.
At the moment we are struggling to get people to understand the
basic principles of indexing. Part of that is making them
understand why usually multiple indexes are bad.
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This is #115, so I think we are being slow. Really slow. No plans, just recording things to do, so when we have a historical novel, we'll be covered. ;-) |
@davidfarmer I'm baffled as to why this was closed without any further discussion over two years after the last comment. "just recording things to do" is typical open development practice. It would be very easy to put a "pipe dream" tag on it or something, and then when a not-so-mythical motivated developer implements this (or something else) with lots and lots of warnings for users, it's just waiting there for them. |
Sorry…made comment without realizing that the comment referencing another issue actually referenced this one and was merged in. |
Some books have a separate index of names from the general index. (Some also have many types of indices, but they probably start to get quite specialized.) This is a feature request to implement this, or perhaps just to implement multiple index types.
<notation>
and<index>
and<solution>
are in some sense all indices, so this should be possible, in principle.The text was updated successfully, but these errors were encountered: