[xep-support] More on <rx:page-index>: feature request

[W. Eliot Kimber]

Paul A. Hoadley wrote:

> I don't see how I can integrate this with the rx:key and rx:page-index
> extensions -- putting an rx:key in the text at the start and end of
> the range will just generate two single page references in the
> rx:page-index.

This is a limitation of the XEP indexing extensions--you have no control 
over which sequences of page numbers will result in ranges.

I have a problem with this design because it will not satisfy the 
requirements of documents that explicitly set ranges, where the indexers 
have gone to great lengths to fine tune the indexes, and it will not 
satisfy the requirements of documents that do not use ranges at all.

That is, there may be an important distinction between 1, 2 and 1-2, 
with the first indicating that two different and distinct mentions of 
the index term happen to occur on adjacent pages, while the second 
indicates a single page-spaning mention.

Without more sophisticated index-specific markup at the FO level, the 
only complete solution I can see to the index problem is Ken's approach, 
which gives you full control over the final index.

XSL Formatter's extension, which simply allows you to collapse duplicate 
page numbers within a sequence of page-number-citation elements is OK 
but doesn't provide an obvious way to manage page ranges (although it 
might be possible--it hasn't yet been a requirement for me) and it 
doesn't provide a way to protect "primary" page numbers from elimination.

I think that the indexing requirements could be satisfied by applying my 
proposed "side file" extensions to do what Ken's approach currently does 
by putting data into the generated PDF--it would eliminate the PDF 
extraction step but would still require two XSLT passes. (See the exslfo 
mailing list archives, maintained at exslfo.sourceforge.net)

Cheers,

E.
-- 
W. Eliot Kimber, eliot at isogen.com
Consultant, ISOGEN International

1016 La Posada Dr., Suite 240
Austin, TX  78752 Phone: 512.656.4139

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