Making an Index

Making an Index

For KDE Documentation, indexes will in the future be generated automatically, so many of these elements are not to be used directly when authoring. At this stage, indexes are not generated, but if you want to you can mark up words that should be indexed with the <indexterm> element, to save work for later.

<indexterm>

Use this to note places in the main text of the document that should have an entry in the index. Don't over use it - not every single occurrence of a word needs to be noted in the index, but every occurrence where that term is significant should be.

indexterm should contain a <primary>, which contains the text that the entry will appear under in the index.

Place the indexterm directly before the word you want to index, and place the word itself inside the primary element. If the word should also be listed under a secondary heading, place that term inside a secondary element.

Example 18.2. Index

Say the document contains the following sentence:

KWord is a graphical, wysiwyg word processor, and is part of KOffice.

You want KWord to have an index entry of it's own, and to also be noted under KOffice in the index.


<para><application>KWord</application>
<indexterm><primary>KWord</primary><secondary>KOffice</secondary></indexterm>
is a graphical, <acronym>WYSIWYG</acronym> word processor, and is part of
KOffice.</para>

The fact that an index entry exists is not normally indicated by a change in appearance.

If you think it should also be added under a third heading in the index, you can use tertiary to indicate this. Most terms you would find in KDE Documentation will only need a primary index heading, so use the others sparingly, if at all.

<tertiary>

tertiary

<seealso>

seealso

The following elements are used to create the actual index, but they are automatically generated, if required. You should not use them when authoring documents.

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