Thursday, September 27, 2012

Indexing

Indexing is mind-numbing. I've got over 700 proposed headings for the index of my One Body book. I need to search for key words for each heading, press ctrl-alt-I to invoke my index-marker entry macro, and then continue. After many hours, I've got about 50 headings done (not counting various "see"-type headings). But it's going faster now as I am going from most-prevalent to least-prevalent. Right now I'm indexing "male" and "female". The worst was indexing "love, romantic".

Anyway, indexing is why I haven't been posting much.

6 comments:

Dan Lower said...

Is there a patron saint of organization that we could direct intentions to on your behalf?

Dagmara Lizlovs said...

I might suggest Aquinas. I can only image what indexing the "Summa" would have been like. Haven't been commenting much. I've been too busy sighting in my crossbows for deer archery season which started on September 7 here in Maryland so I'm a bit behind the power curve.

Mike Almeida said...

I actually could not bring myself to do an index. It's dreadful work. I broke down and paid a graduate student to do it. I admit, it isn't as good as it would have been (or, maybe, might have been).

Alexander R Pruss said...

Believe it or not, I actually indexed my math dissertation for no good reason at all... For fun?!

Dagmara Lizlovs said...

I gift wrapped my senior year powered sailplane design and put it on Prof Ed Lesher's desk. I did so because a faculty member told me that this was my last chance to have some fun, and that when I got that dull, boring office job I wouldn't be able to gift wrap my reports to my boss. My only problem was finding suitable gift wrap paper because it wasn't Christmas, wasn't Easter, wasn't Prof Lesher's birthday, I was too embarrassed to use something too feminine . . .

But I did gift wrap it.

Alexander R Pruss said...

Well, I've made 3700+ markups in my file and I'm now running my index generation script:
$ perl ../index.pl < indexed.txt >indexed.html
746 pages found
[abortion].[Abraham].[abstain].[abstinence].[abusive relationships].[Adam].[adel
phopoi▒sis].[adoption].[adultery].[affection].[afterlife].[afterplay].[agap▒].[A
IDS].[Akerlof, George A., et al.].[Albigensians].[alcholism].[alcoholism].[alien
ation].[aliens].[Allen, Woody].[altruism].[Alzheimer's disease].[Ambrosiaster].[
Amnon].[amputation].[Ananias].[angel]
...