For ease of visualizing, I'm going to give an example of indexing a
cookbook. I have these 2 entries as the example:

Page 1 = Mulligatawny Soup
Keywords: carrots, celery, olive oil

Page 2 = Beef Stroganoff
Keywords: sirloin beef steak, mushrooms, tomato paste

------------------------------
A normal index in the back of the book might look like this, which is
not comprehensive enough:

B
Beef Stroganoff 2

M
Mulligatawny Soup 1

S
Soup: Mulligatawny Soup 1

------------------------------
What is really needed is this type of index which was created out of
the just the information found the 2 records above, i.e., hopefully I
don't have to manually type all this information in. Hopefully FMP6
can take the above entry info to create the report in this format (ING
here, or some other text used in actual db, to denote that it's a
keyword):

B
Beef Stroganoff 2

C
Carrots ING (Mulligatawny Soup) 1
Celery ING (Mulligatawny Soup) 1

M
Mulligatawny Soup 1
Mushrooms ING (Beef Stroganoff) 2

O
Olive Oil ING (Mulligatawny Soup) 1
S
Soup: Mulligatawny Soup 1
Sirloin Beef Steak ING (Beef Stroganoff) 2

T
Tomato Paste ING (Beef Stroganoff) 2

------------------------------
I not only do research online but have several large books I'd like to
create a printout index booklet that I'd just fold up and tuck in the
front of these books. This would make finding information in these
books a lot easier. Doing such an index manually is just not an
option and going completely virtual is unnecessary since I already
have these research materials. I did it manually for one of my books
and don't want to spend all that time indexing my newer books.

Anyone know if FMP6 has a feature that can take a box full of keywords
and reference them along with their source title and page such as in
the example I've provided above?

Thanks.

Hi, Cerulean -

It's hard to give an answer, because I'm not sure what fields you're
working with. You write that you have several large books you want to
create an index for. Are these already digitized in some form? If
the books aren't digitized, you can't do anything with them on your
computer. This is probably obvious, but I just want to put it on the
table. The same goes for the keywords. When you say you have a box
full of keywords, do you mean that you have a text box in a database
full of keywords, or that you have a physical box of keywords?

If you mean a text box in a database -- which I'll call a field to
limit confusion -- do you have only one field with all keywords for
all books; or one field in each record with keywords for a single
book; or are there multiple fields for each book, so that one might
have the book's title, another its author, another its keywords, etc.?

There are dozens of ways FileMaker can parse data and create an index
like the one you're looking for, but it depends on the source material
-- that is, on the data it's given and the structure by which it's
organized. Can you elaborate? I'd be able to offer some suggestions
with a little more information.

Thanks.
-J.

"Cerulean" <Spamming (AT) NOTallowed (DOT) com> wrote


Don't waste your time. There's no way in FileMaker of getting an accurate
page number for the index (unless your report is set to have only one record
per page AND one page per record) thanks to a "bug" in Preview mode whereby
it doesn't actually match what comes out of the printer. For example,
sometimes a record shown as being on page 5 in Preview mode will be shuffled
over onto page 6 when the paper comes out of the printer.

It would be better to export the data to Microsoft Word or similar and then
do the formatting and index creation there.

Helpful Harry )

On Sat, 30 Jan 2010 11:06:33 +1300, "Your Name" <your.name (AT) isp (DOT) com>
wrote:

Thanks. The page number you're referring to is not the one that will
be in the FMP solution, though, it's an actual page number from the
reference material we're creating the index for. Perhaps this changes
things?

On Fri, 29 Jan 2010 13:31:37 -0800 (PST), jahn
<jahnbigbooty (AT) yahoo (DOT) com> wrote:

[snip]

No, the books aren't digitized. That's a good point. I'm trying to
create a solution for making a hard copy index like you'd find in the
back of a book. I'd then staple the pages of resulting hardcopy
printout and it into the book itself. I did that about 9 years ago
for one of my volumes that I use quite a bit that had a very limited
index. It made it tough to find things with the original index. But
my own was much better and reduced the task of flipping through pages
considerably! <g> The challenge is that that index took me weeks to
do as an RTF and it was awful to try to go back and add keyword
entries manually. I don't have that kind of time, either.

Here's an example below. I didn't want to complicate things in my
original message but you're right - an example is needed. I'll use 2
fictitious records only. I think they adequately show the complexity
of this task <g>.

I'm hoping to input just these 2 records as you see below, very
simply. This type of entry would allow me to easily go back at any
time to add keywords and to then update the printout:

Big Bang Nucleosynthesis - pg. 5
Keywords: baryogenesis, hydrogen, primordial nucleosynthesis

Planetary Nebula - pg. 1
Keywords: Milky Way Galaxy, ionized gas

----------------------------------------
A miniminal index as I see in some of my books would look something
like this, which is not enough information:

B
Big Bang Nucleosynthesis, 5

P
Planetary Nebula, 1

----------------------------------------
What I'm trying to achieve is more like this example below:

B
baryogenesis (Big Bang Nucleosynthesis), 5
Big Bang Nucleosynthesis, 5

H
hydrogen (Big Bang Nucleosynthesis), 5

I
ionized gas (Planetary Nebula), 1

M
Milky Way Galaxy (Planetary Nebula), 1

P
Planetary Nebula, 1
primordial nucleosynthesis (Big Bang Nucleosynthesis), 5

----------------------------------------
There is an added complexity that I only realized after doing all the
above, which I will mention here though it won't change the solution,
just how I enter the keywords. If I also type in a page number after
each keyword but keep it within whatever means of separating the words
FMP6 needs, then hopefully the keyword entries would resolve in this
manner, instead:


Entry: Keywords: baryogenesis - 7, ...
Printout: B
baryogenesis - 7 (Big Bang Nucleosynthesis, 5)

The report would have column titles at the top to explain what each of
the above components means, of course.

hth D

"Cerulean" <Spamming (AT) NOTallowed (DOT) com> wrote

That does change things - it's a completely different concept to what I
thought you wer trying to achieve.

Probably the easiest way to achieve what you want in FileMaker 6 would be
two files - one for the main word and it's page number with a relationship
link to the second file for all the minor words and their pages numbers.
e.g.
MainWord File
MainWordID Number, Auto-enter Serial Number
MainWord Text
PageNumber Text

MinorWords File
ParentWordID Number
MinorWord Text
PageNumber Text
AlphabetLetter Calculation, Text Result
= Left(MinorWord, 1)

Relationship
Match record in MainWord with records in MinorWords
when MainWordID = MinorWords::ParentWordID

Each MainWord record would also have to have itself as a MinorWord record so
that it appears in the Index report. You'll also need some Calculation
fields in there to reformat the text as you want it displayed in the Index
report and to pull in the MainWord and its page number to go inside the
bracketed section.

The minor words would be entered using a Portal in the MainWords file.

When you're ready to print the Index report you then just need to sort all
the records in the MinorWords file and print from there with the appropriate
Sub-summary to group each alphabetical section.

You might have a problem if the minor words appear multiple times though.

Helpful Harry )

On Sun, 31 Jan 2010 18:28:58 +1300, "Your Name" <your.name (AT) isp (DOT) com>
wrote:

Thanks for the great info. I'm afraid it's beyond my capabilities,
though. I guess I'll just have to figure something else out without
going completely manual. It's surprising but there isn't even decent
book indexing software out there, either ... I guess computers have
made this feature not so necessary. Ah well. Thanks.