Index Suggestions

[Joe Swann]

I am working on a family history book, which has spawned two suggestions concerning the indexing feature in AP2.

1. I am using the style override when adding new index markers. For example, when I mark an entry that identifies a person in a picture caption, I choose emphasis so that the entry will be italicized. Sometimes, in my haste, I forget to set this or can't remember if I did. I can see the mark in the index panel, but there is no indication of the style override, nor is there a way to edit it. All I can do is delete that marker and create it again. There needs to be some indicator as well as a way to edit this setting.
2. In keeping with genealogical practice, I list all women by maiden name in the index. However, I am also creating additional index entries for each woman's married names with a "see" reference pointing to their maiden name entry. For example, Jane Jones Smith has a main index entry for "Jones, Jane" with an additional entry for "Smith, Jane," which points the reader to "Jones, Jane." It would be nice if the "see" entries didn't appear as suggestions when I set index marks for people.

Thank you for listening.

[MikeTO]

1 hour ago, Joe Swann said:

I am using the style override when adding new index markers. For example, when I mark an entry that identifies a person in a picture caption, I choose emphasis so that the entry will be italicized. Sometimes, in my haste, I forget to set this or can't remember if I did. I can see the mark in the index panel, but there is no indication of the style override, nor is there a way to edit it. All I can do is delete that marker and create it again. There needs to be some indicator as well as a way to edit this setting.

I've suggested this, too, and I believe others have as well, but the most requests for this feature the better. We definitely need to be able to see in the panel which index references have style override set and we need a way to change that setting without having to delete the reference mark.

Style override didn't work reliably until earlier this year so not many of us have made use of it - I still need to go back and add it to my history book now that it's working.

1 hour ago, Joe Swann said:

In keeping with genealogical practice, I list all women by maiden name in the index. However, I am also creating additional index entries for each woman's married names with a "see" reference pointing to their maiden name entry. For example, Jane Jones Smith has a main index entry for "Jones, Jane" with an additional entry for "Smith, Jane," which points the reader to "Jones, Jane." It would be nice if the "see" entries didn't appear as suggestions when I set index marks for people.

While it would be helpful for books that have clearcut primary and secondary references, my books don't have that hierarchy so if it were to hide cross-referenced topics that would need to be an option.

I have a bigger suggestion that I've been noodling on. I miss the features that apps had before the current crop of apps simplified indexing. In the old days we could add a single reference marker that would be indexed under multiple topics at once. IIRC, it worked like this:

"Apples" <<< to index Apples under Apples
"Fruit" : "Apples" <<< to index Apples under Fruit
"Apples" ; "Fruit" : "Apples" <<< to index Apples under Apples and Fruit at the same time

Few people understood it so the UI designs we have now are much better, but in the process we lost the ability for reference markers to point to multiple topics. I think there's a way this could be done without making the UI too complex. There's one page in my history book where I added five or six index reference marks at the same position - I'd rather they be a single reference.