Learn how to set up an index topic.
Paligo has several index-related elements that you can use to Create an Index Topic and Add Index References to your topics. Add the index topic to your publication the same way as you would add any other topic to a publication. Typically, it is placed at the end of the publication.
These are especially useful in PDF outputs, where users are more likely to need to refer to an index to find out where certain subjects are explained in a document.
With HTML and other outputs that will be read digitally, the index is often less useful as there is a search tool to use instead. However, you may still decide to include an index in your online content too.
Tip
Paligo can generate and sort your index automatically, Index Sorting for Language Symbols
Learn how to create an index in Paligo. The index will contain a list of terms with a reference to the relevant parts of the content.
An index topic is a regular topic where an index
element has been added. When you add the index topic to your publication, Paligo will automatically gather all index references from the topics. The index references will be categorized by letter and sorted alphabetically and each has a page reference or a link.
If the publication does not contain any index references, the index will be empty. You need to add index references to your topics before you publish, see Add Index References.
Consider how you want your index to appear in the published output:
-
The index used as a main topic. This is the most common approach for an index.
-
The index used as a subsection inside a main topic (for example References).
Note
The index
element will automatically add a title named Index. This means that if you have a main topic called Index, the subsection will also be called Index. This extra title can be hidden, see Hide Index Title for HTML5 Output or Activate Index Auto-Title for PDF.
Tip
To find out more about using the Element Context Menu to add content, see About Authoring
To create an index topic:
-
Position the cursor at a valid position for the
index
element.For example, after the section
title
, but before the firstpara
element. -
Press Alt + Enter ⏎ (Windows) or Command ⌘ + Enter ⏎ (Mac) to display the Element Context Menu.
-
Enter index and select it in the menu.
-
Delete the
para
element that is included by default, if not needed. -
Select Save.
-
Add your index topic to your publication, see Add Content to a Publication.
When you publish your publication, Paligo will automatically gather the index references.
Learn how to add index references to your topics in Paligo. The references tell Paligo what terms should appear in the index and what type of reference should be used.
To get index entries to appear in an index topic, add index references in the topics that contain your content. These references tell Paligo:
-
What terms should appear in the index topic
-
What type of reference the terms should use.
There are four types of index references that you can use (see the table below).
If your content does not contain any index references, your index topic will be empty when you publish.
The following table shows the reference types.
Appearance |
Type |
Description |
---|---|---|
Primary Index References |
The index topic will only show the main terms in alphabetical order with page numbers. Learn more, see Add a Primary Index Reference. |
|
Secondary Index References |
The index topic will show both main terms and subterms in alphabetical order with page numbers. Learn more, see Add a Secondary Index Reference. |
|
See Index References |
The index topic will show the main terms in alphabetical order without page numbers with a link in brackets to another term. It might be that you want to include terms that could be used for the same thing and refer the reader to the preferred term instead. Learn more about how to add these extra references, see Add a See Index Reference. |
|
See Also Index References |
The index topic will show the main terms in alphabetical order with page numbers including a link within brackets to an additional term. Learn more about how to add these extra references, see Add a See Also Index Reference. |
If you use a primary index reference, the index topic will only show the main terms in alphabetical order with page numbers. If you publish to HTML, there is a hyperlink to the page instead of a page number.
Tip
To find out more about using the Element Context Menu to add content, see About Authoring.
To add a primary index reference to your content:
-
Select the topic or component in the Content Manager to open it in the Editor.
-
Position the cursor immediately before the text for the term that you want to use.
-
Press Alt + Enter ⏎ (Windows) or Command ⌘ + Enter ⏎ (Mac) to display the Element Context Menu.
-
Enter
indexterm
and select it from the menu.Paligo adds an
indexterm
element with anprimary
element inside it. -
Enter the main term inside the
primary
element to make it appear in the index.Note
You should now have a structure like that shown in the example below. Here, we have used "temperature" as an example of a primary term.
<para>If the sensor detects that the room is too hot or too cold, the system will raise a <indexterm><primary>temperature</primary></indexterm> temperature alarm.</para>
-
Select Save.
When you publish, Paligo will automatically add your index entries to your index topic. If you do not have an index topic, see Create an Index Topic.
If you use a secondary index reference, the index topic will show both main terms and subterms in alphabetical order with page numbers. If you publish to HTML, there is a hyperlink to the page instead of a page number.
Tip
To find out more about using the Element Context Menu to add content, see About Authoring.
To add a secondary index reference to your content:
-
Select the topic or component in the Content Manager to open it in the Editor.
-
Position the cursor immediately before the text for the term that you want to use.
-
Press Alt + Enter ⏎ (Windows) or Command ⌘ + Enter ⏎ (Mac) to display the Element Context Menu.
-
Enter
indexterm
and select it from the menu.Paligo adds an
indexterm
element with anprimary
element inside it. -
Enter the main term inside the
primary
element to make it appear in the index.Note
You should now have a structure like that shown in the example below. Here, we have used "temperature" as an example of a primary term.
<para>If the sensor detects that the room is too hot or too cold, the system will raise a <indexterm><primary>temperature</primary></indexterm> temperature alarm.</para>
-
Position the cursor after the
primary
reference, but before the end of theindexterm
. -
Press Alt + Enter ⏎ (Windows) or Command ⌘ + Enter ⏎ (Mac) to display the Element Context Menu.
-
Enter
secondary
and select it from the menu. -
Enter the subterm inside the
secondary
element to make it appear in the index.Note
You should now have a structure like this (where we have used "alarm" as an example of a secondary term):
<para>If the sensor detects that the room is too hot or too cold, the system will raise a <indexterm><primary>Temperature</primary><secondary>alarm</secondary></indexterm>temperature alarm.</para>
-
Select Save.
When you publish, Paligo will automatically add your index entries to your index topic. If you do not have an index topic, see Create an Index Topic.
A see index reference is a combination of a primary
element for the main term and a see
element for the link to the additional term.
Note
It is also possible to use a see
element for a secondary term, but these entries can become complicated. It is usually better to keep your index entries as simple as possible, so that your readers can find the information they need quickly.
If you use a see index reference, the index topic will show the main terms in alphabetical order without page numbers with a link in brackets to another term. It might be that you want to include terms that could be used for the same thing and refer the reader to the preferred term instead.
To add a see index reference:
-
Select the topic or component in the Content Manager to open it in the Editor.
-
Position the cursor immediately before the text for the term that you want to use.
-
Press Alt + Enter ⏎ (Windows) or Command ⌘ + Enter ⏎ (Mac) to display the Element Context Menu.
-
Enter
indexterm
and select it from the menu.Paligo adds an
indexterm
element with anprimary
element inside it. -
Enter the main term inside the
primary
element to make it appear in the index.Note
You should now have a structure like that shown in the example below. Here, we have used "temperature" as an example of a primary term.
<para>If the sensor detects that the room is too hot or too cold, the system will raise a <indexterm><primary>temperature</primary></indexterm> temperature alarm.</para>
-
Position the cursor after the
primary
reference, but before the end of theindexterm
. -
Press Alt + Enter ⏎ (Windows) or Command ⌘ + Enter ⏎ (Mac) to display the Element Context Menu.
-
Enter
see
and select it from the menu. -
Enter the term inside the
see
element that is to appear as link within brackets in the index.The entered term must be an existing index term.
Note
You should now have a structure like that shown below, where we have used "Temperature" as the "see" index entry.
<para>If the sensor detects that the room is too hot or too cold, the system will raise a <indexterm><primary>Thermal</primary><see>Temperature</see></indexterm>temperature alarm.</para>
-
Select Save.
When you publish, Paligo will automatically add your index entries to your index topic. If you do not have an index topic, see Create an Index Topic.
A see also index reference is a combination of a primary
element for the main term and a seealso
element for the link to the additional term.
Note
It is also possible to use a seealso
element for a secondary term, but these entries can become complicated. It is usually better to keep your index entries as simple as possible, so that your readers can find the information they need quickly.
If you use a see also index reference, the index topic will show the main terms in alphabetical order with page numbers including a link in brackets to an additional term. If you publish to HTML, there is a hyperlink to the page instead of a page number.
To add a see also index reference:
-
Select the topic or component in the Content Manager to open it in the Editor.
-
Position the cursor immediately before the text for the term that you want to use.
-
Press Alt + Enter ⏎ (Windows) or Command ⌘ + Enter ⏎ (Mac) to display the Element Context Menu.
-
Enter
indexterm
and select it from the menu.Paligo adds an
indexterm
element with anprimary
element inside it. -
Enter the main term inside the
primary
element to make it appear in the index.Note
You should now have a structure like that shown in the example below. Here, we have used "temperature" as an example of a primary term.
<para>If the sensor detects that the room is too hot or too cold, the system will raise a <indexterm><primary>temperature</primary></indexterm> temperature alarm.</para>
-
Position the cursor after the
primary
reference, but before the end of theindexterm
. -
Press Alt + Enter ⏎ (Windows) or Command ⌘ + Enter ⏎ (Mac) to display the Element Context Menu.
-
Enter
seealso
and select it from the menu. -
Enter the term inside the
seealso
element that is to appear as a link within brackets in the index.The entered term must be an existing index term.
Note
You should now have a structure like that shown below, where we have used "Thermal" as the "seealso" index entry.
<para>If the sensor detects that the room is too hot or too cold, the system will raise a <indexterm><primary>Temperature</primary><seealso>Thermal</seealso></indexterm>temperature alarm.</para>
-
Select Save.
When you publish, Paligo will automatically add your index entries to your index topic. If you do not have an index topic, see Create an Index Topic.
Paligo can currently only use UTF-8 to define the sort order in an index. This means that languages that use symbols or a mix of symbols and phonemic characters (like Japanese, Korean and Chinese) will encounter problems when publishing in multiple languages.
A possible workaround for PDF output is by defining an indexterm
that uses a phonemic word (alphabetic writing) for index sorting. The indexterm
is invisible in the topics and works in the background to sort and group the index references.
The sortas
attribute on the primary
, secondary
and tertiary
elements is used to express a key. Usually the key is the same word as used as the value of the primary, secondary and tertiary element. This key is subsequently used to look up the actual phonemic version of the term in a lookup file for the language being published to.
For languages that require a mapping between a symbolic term and a phonemic sortas
value, you have to enable the feature in the System settings. Also, you have to prepare one lookup file for each language that includes the sortas
key and the translated phonemic word to replace it.
The sortas
key will control the sort order of the element sortas
attribute and group the indexterms
in the index topic.
-
Sign in to Paligo using a user account that has administrator permissions.
-
Select the avatar in the top-right corner.
-
Select Settings from the menu.
-
Select the System Settings tab.
-
Enable Use lookup files for index sortering with the slider.
-
Prepare a
lookup
file for each language and name it like this:sortas-lookup-language code.xml
.Replace the text "language code" with a two-letter or four-letter code (for example "sortas-lookup-ja.xml", "sortas-lookup-zh.xml" or "sortas-lookup-ko.xml". Learn more, see Language Codes.
-
Build the file like this:
<sortas-lookup lang="language code"> <sortas key="phonemic word" value="phonemic word translated"/> </sortas-lookup>
-
Upload the
lookup
file to thexsl
folder, see WebDAV Access to your Paligo Instance Folders.
Prepare the topics with indexterms
that will be replaced with translated phonemic words from a file called sortas-lookup
, see Enable Lookup Files for Index Sorting. Once the topics are ready, you add them to a publication containing an index topic and translate them.
The output index will be sorted according to the translated phonemic words (sortas
keys) from the sortas-lookup
files, but show the language symbols instead of the sortas
attribute value.
Note
When you have this feature enabled and Paligo cannot find a lookup file for a language, all sortas
attributes for this language will automatically be removed during the publishing process.
This means that you only require lookup files for languages that use symbols or a mix of symbols and phonemic characters (like Japanese, Korean and Chinese), but not for languages that use the Latin alphabet (like Swedish and English).
-
Select the topic or component in the Content Manager to open it in the Editor.
-
Position the cursor after the word that needs an
indexterm
added. -
Press Alt + Enter ⏎ (Windows) or Command ⌘ + Enter ⏎ (Mac) to display the Element Context Menu.
-
Enter
indexterm
and select it from the menu. -
Enter the word (within the chevrons) to be shown in the index topic. (Probably a symbol, if your source language is Japanese.)
It will be replaced with a translated phonemic version from the
sortas-lookup
file. -
Select the
primary
element in the Element Structure Menu and choose Go to element.Note
This also works for secondary and tertiary elements.
-
Enter
sortas
in the Element Attributes Panel and select it from the menu. -
Enter the key word that will fetch the phonemic word from the lookup file.
The
sortas
key will control the sort order of the elementsortas
attribute and group theindexterms
in the index topic. For a Japanese source language this can actually be the symbol. -
Select Save.
Learn how to add a title element to an Index in Paligo. Typically, index titles are used when you what to give the index topic a different name than "Index".
When you Create an Index Topic the index
element includes an extra title named Index. It is possible to hide this title for both PDF and HTML5 output or include them in PDF bookmarks.
Paligo can automatically add a title to your index for PDF output. The automatic title will be "Index" and if you publish in other languages, a translation of "Index" is provided as well.
To include or exclude the automatically generated index title:
-
Select Layout in the top menu.
-
Select the Layout you want to update or Create a Layout.
Tip
You can copy the URL of the Layout Editor and paste it into a new tab in your browser. This can be useful if you frequently switch between your Paligo content and the Layout settings.
-
Select General and choose Glossary, Index, and Bibliography.
-
Control whether to include or exclude the Index auto-title.
-
Enabled - Paligo will check if your index has a title during publishing:
-
Existing title - Paligo will use that title.
-
No title - Paligo will generate a
title
element with "Index" as the title text.
-
-
Disabled Paligo will not generate an automatic index title. Default
-
-
Select Save.
When you publish to PDF with this layout, the output will include or exclude an automatic index title.
When you add an index element to a topic, it does not include an index title. If you want to add an index title, you can either:
-
Add the
title
element inside the index element -
Set Paligo to automatically generate an index title for you, when you publish.
If you want an automatic index title, see Activate Index Auto-Title for PDF . For HTML5 outputs, an index title is included by default - if you have added a title manually, Paligo will use that. Otherwise, it will create an automatic title for you.
Note
The index title is shown in HTML5 outputs by default. But you can hide it by using CSS (see Hide Index Title for HTML5 Output).
To add your own index title to a topic:
-
Open the index topic in the Paligo editor.
-
Select the
index
element. -
Use the element context menu to add the the
title
element. -
Enter the text for your index title inside the
title
element. -
Select Save.
PDFs can have bookmarks that act like a table of contents in a side panel, where your topics are shown in order. If you have an index, it's likely that you will want a link to the index to appear here.
If your index is inside a topic called "Index", you will not need to take any action. The "Index" topic will appear in the bookmarks by default.
But if your index is inside a topic with a different title, there will be no obvious way for the reader to access the index. For example, let's say you have added your index to a topic called "references". In the published PDF, the bookmarks will only show "References", which makes it harder for your readers to find the index.
To fix this, you can set Paligo to include the index's title in the bookmarks as well. If your index does not have a title, you can add one or you can set Paligo to generate one automatically.
-
Select Layout in the top menu.
-
Select the Layout you want to update or Create a Layout.
Tip
You can copy the URL of the Layout Editor and paste it into a new tab in your browser. This can be useful if you frequently switch between your Paligo content and the Layout settings.
-
Select General and choose Glossary, Index, and Bibliography.
-
Enable the Index title or auto title in bookmarks setting to get Paligo to include the title of the index element in the bookmarks.
Note
This setting will only work if your index has a title, or you have set Paligo to generate a title automatically.
-
Select Save.
When you publish to PDF with this layout, Paligo includes the index title in the bookmarks. It is a subsection of its parent topic.
Your HTML5 output will show your index title by default if your index:
-
Contains a
title
element -
Has no
title
element, but your HTML5 layout is set to generate an index title automatically. The automatic title is called "Index" (or a translation of Index for other languages).
This can mean that your HTML index has two "Index" titles, one for the topic and one for the index element. To hide the title for the index element, use CSS:
-
Create or edit an existing custom CSS file and add the following code:
.index .titlepage{ display: none; }
To learn more about creating custom CSS, see Style with CSS.
-
Create a Layout. Alternatively, you can Edit a Layout.
-
Upload your custom CSS to the HTML5 layout.
-
Select Save.
When you publish to HTML5 using this layout, the index element's title is hidden.
How to set up multi-column index pages for PDF outputs.
By default, your index is shown as a single-column index in PDF outputs. This can be suitable for shorter indices.
If you prefer a multi-column layout to show more index entries per page and to adjust the gap between the columns, this is set in the Layout Editor.
To define the index columns for PDF output:
-
Select Layout in the top menu.
-
Select the Layout you want to update or Create a Layout.
Tip
You can copy the URL of the Layout Editor and paste it into a new tab in your browser. This can be useful if you frequently switch between your Paligo content and the Layout settings.
-
Select General in the sidebar.
-
Select Glossary, Index and Bibliography.
-
Select the Number of columns for the Index from the menu.
You can choose from 1 to 4.
Paligo will aim to balance the columns automatically, so that they are approximately equal length.
-
Enter a width between each column in the Columns gap for the index. You must specify a measurement unit after the width (pt, px, em).
This setting only applies if there is more than one column.
-
Select Save.
When you publish to PDF with this layout, your index will use the column number and spacing settings that you applied.
Use the Advanced Search to find topics that include index references. Depending on what you want to find, you can choose to:
-
Include all topics with index references by using the
indexterm
element in the search. -
Narrow down the search by specifying the type of index reference (
primary
,secondary
,see
orseealso
).
To search for index references:
-
Select Quick Search in the top menu.
-
Select Advanced Search.
-
Select the Search tab.
-
Enter
indexterm
or specify a particular index reference type (primary
,secondary
,see
orseealso
) in the Contains field. -
Select the Content checkbox and clear the others in the Search in field.
-
Select Search.
-
All topics that match the search criteria will be presented below the search area.
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