You are here: User Interface Elements - How to Use Each One > Creating Auto-Indexes

Creating Auto-Indexes

Auto-indexes let you automatically add words in your project to a generated index, rather than inserting all of the index markers manually. To do this, you can add phrases and corresponding index entries to an auto-index file. When you generate the output, Flare scans the auto-index file and adds the words it finds to the generated index.

example

Let's say that you want to make sure that the word "Pasta" appears in your generated index, containing links to all of the topics where that word is found. Your first option is to manually insert the "Pasta" index marker into all of those topics. Your second option is to add the word "Pasta" to an auto-index file. When you generate the output, Flare automatically creates index entries and links for the words and phrases in your auto-index file, including the word "Pasta."

How to create an auto-index

Select Project>Advanced>Add Auto-index Phrase Set. The Add Auto-index Phrase Set dialog opens.
In the Template Folders area, select one of the folders. The Templates section to the right displays the auto-index set templates contained in the folder you selected.

Click here to find out what templates are all about.
In the Templates area, select an auto-index set template.
In the File Name field, provide a name for the auto-index phrase set file.
Click Add.

The Auto-index Editor opens in the middle of the interface. Also, the auto-index file (.flaix extension) is added to the Advanced folder in the Project Organizer. In the future, you can open the auto-index phrase set from there.
For each phrase in your project that you want to be automatically converted to a particular index entry, complete the following steps in the Auto-index Editor.
1. In the local toolbar, click . The Properties dialog opens and a new row is added to the editor.
2. In the Phrase field, type the word(s) that you want Flare to find in your project and use as the basis for a new index entry. Please note that the fields in this dialog are case-sensitive; therefore, if you enter a phrase with the initial word capitalized, only occurrences just like that in your topics will be used to create index entries.
3. In the Index Term field, enter the resulting word(s) to be added to the generated index. If you want to create a multi-level index entry, separate the first-level term and the second-level term with a colon.
  examples
  Let's say that you entered pasta in the Phrase field and Pasta in the Index Term field. In that case, the generated index in the print-based output will display like this:
  The index entry points to any topics where the lowercase instance of "pasta" has been found. If you also want the index entry to point to occurrences where the word is not all lowercase ("Pasta"), you need to add another row to the Auto-Index Editor and create a phrase for it (i.e., enter Pasta in both the Phrase field and the Index Term field).
  Let's say that your project talks about many kinds of pasta and you want to create multiple index entries for certain words, some with single-level entries and others with sublevels. For example, maybe you want Flare to scan the project for the word "rigatoni." When it finds occurrences, you might want a single-level index entry like this:
  In that case, you would enter rigatoni in the Phrase field and Rigatoni in the Index Term field. That index entry would point to all of instances of "rigatoni" in the project. But you also might want a multi-level index entry displayed like this:
  In that case, you would enter rigatoni in the Phrase field and Pasta:rigatoni in the Index Term field.
4. Click OK.
Press CTRL+S or click to save your work.

WHAT'S NEXT?

If you are creating print-based output, make sure you also create a topic with an index proxy. After you generate output, Flare scans the project for the phrases you provided and adds them to the generated index (along with any index markers that you added to topics manually).