[xep-support] Demonstrable back of the book index methodology for XSL-FO 1.0

[G. Ken Holman]

The XSL-FO 1.0 page-number citation facility is well-suited for the 
generation of tables of content but ill-suited for back-of-the-book indexes 
where the cited pages must be arbitrarily massaged into ranges and 
singleton pages.

I've just implemented back-of-the-book indexes for the next edition cycle 
of our electronic books.  It mostly involves XSLT and XSL-FO 1.0 ... the 
catch is to use the PDF output format for an intermediate pass and a 
no-charge download for extracting text from PDF files.  The model will work 
for other final form print formats where the canvas content can be extracted.

I've distilled a working demonstration and the XSLT stylesheets for doing 
this to illustrate the methodology.  I introduced this methodology during 
the question and answer period of Eliot Kimber's XSL-FO case study at the 
Extreme Markup conference in Montréal last August.  I only got the chance 
to implement it last week.

Only one no-charge PDF to text download has been identified so far ... I'm 
hoping other XSL-FO users will tell me of other tools meeting the free 
criteria.

Please visit the "Resource Library (free developer tools)" link from our 
home page cited below.

Feedback is welcome!

.................... Ken

--
Upcoming hands-on in-depth XSLT/XPath and/or XSL-FO:
-                             North America:  Feb 3 - Feb 7,2003

G. Ken Holman               mailto:gkholman at CraneSoftwrights.com
Crane Softwrights Ltd.        http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/f/
Box 266, Kars, Ontario CANADA K0A-2E0  +1(613)489-0999 (F:-0995)
ISBN 0-13-065196-6                     Definitive XSLT and XPath
ISBN 0-13-140374-5                             Definitive XSL-FO
ISBN 1-894049-08-X Practical Transformation Using XSLT and XPath
ISBN 1-894049-10-1             Practical Formatting Using XSL-FO
Next conference training:                          2003-03-03,06

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