help with volume/chapter prefixes

[Millis Indexing]

Dear Collective Wisdom,

I'm trying to set up a complex locator in Sky 8, so that I can streamline data entry a bit. I have almost everything correct, but there is one hiccup that's preventing the output from being what I need it to be.

The locators have two parts, each of which will have a prefix. Instead of manually typing in the prefixes, which will be letters, I am trying to set them up so that they automatically generate. So, for example, if I want the index locator to be X9Y17, I type 9.17 in the page field. Except, even though I have the prefixes set up the same way for both section, only one is showing up. What I'm getting is X917. I've experimented a bit trying to adjust various settings, but I just can't seem to get the output I want. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks,
Kendra

--
Kendra H. Millis
President, American Society for Indexing, 2017-2018
Theodore C. Hines Award recipient, 2020

Millis Indexing Services
MillisIndexing.com

www.MaineFiberWorkshop.com

[anthon...@afindexing.com]

What about this: if the Y prefix is the same for the whole thing, can you set up a translation for the period in the locator? That way, every time you type the ‘.’ you will get a Y. Of course leaving the other prefix the same.

 

Best regards,

Anthony

 

 

Anthony Fazio, Indexer

AF Indexing | Sole Proprietor

www.afindexing.com

anthon...@afindexing.com

Littleton, CO

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "SKYIndexUsers" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to skyindexuser...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/skyindexusers/c535d43b-1465-417d-8193-17a8e93159cb%40gmail.com.

Virus-free.www.avast.com

[Deborah Patton]

Hi Kendra,

I like this particular task since I was unaware of add prefix for way too long. But to backup and look at the locator parts. The period in the middle  9.17 is one thing that's causing problems. 

In Options>Index/Volumes/Chapters your input separator should be that period. The default is a colon. Change that to a period. And put that in the output separator field too.

Make sure all of this is enabled (click box at the bottom). 

Then click on the Sections tab and make sure the input and output separators are periods there too.

Try putting just 17 in the page field.

What does the number 9 represent? A chapter? A section?

If it's a chapter (along with the letters), select all the records in that chapter, then go to Tools>Add Prefix to Selected Records. Choose the page field.

Then type in X9Y. Click okay.

When I did that I got locators like this: X9Y7.2, X9Y5.1 and so on.

Works fine.

Deborah

--

[Millis Indexing]

I thought about something like that, but since it's the second prefix that's not working, removing the first prefix doesn't change anything else. Taking the previous example, instead of the X917 that I'm currently getting, I simply get 917.

- Kendra

[Millis Indexing]

Hi, Deborah,

.Your answer doesn't exactly address what I'm trying to do, but it is starting to lead me to an answer.

I had already set up the period as the separator for the first part in both places, so that was not the issue. The problem I was apparently having is that I was not including the second input separator in the locator field. So, for example, using a period for the first input separator and a semi-colon for the second, in order to get my preferred output of X9Y17 I needed to type 9.17; as the locator. (I don't want any punctuation in the output; the punctuation is only there so that Sky knows which parts are which.)

The problem I now have, though, is that if I use punctuation to separate the two parts and also to designate the end (with the result that the prefixes are generated automatically), I now don't seem to be able to use the + and - keys to increment and decrement, and I also get an error message anytime I try to use a range. 

Regarding the last bit of your response, where I would select a group of records and then apply the prefix, I'm confused as to why I would need this step. It seems that the purpose of the prefix feature is to have the prefix(es) appear as part of the locator when you didn't manually type them in. What you have suggested seems to be an option for a workaround if the prefix function is not working properly. I have another workaround planned in case I just can't get this to work, but my preference would be to figure out how to set this up properly from the beginning. The book I'm working on is quite large, and I will save myself time and headaches if I can get this right.

Best,
Kendra

[Deborah Patton]

Kendra,

Please tell us what each separate part of the locator is. I can't tell them apart.

Input separators don't matter except that they're marking where each part is separated from the other parts. The output  separator can and should be blank  -- especially since none are wanted in the end.

Deborah

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/skyindexusers/8a48a513-6e0e-4cd4-9b83-24c1ee346640%40gmail.com.

[Millis Indexing]

In the example I've been using, there are two parts to the locator. The first part is "9" and the second part is "17". I want each part to have its own prefix, in this case an "X" before the 9 and a "Y" before the 17. I.e., the output I want is "X9Y17". I have been able to produce this output by making sure to include the input delimiters for both parts when typing the locator, in this case a period for the first part and a semi-colon for the second. So for this example, if I type "9.17;" in the locator field, the locator that appears in the index is what I want -- "X9Y17". (Without the final semi-colon the output does not include the second prefix; it is "X917".)

Although I appear to have solved this first problem, of getting the output I need for a basic locator, I still have two problems that I need to work out. If I can't figure them out, I'll have ditch the attempt to use prefixes and go back to manually typing most of the locators.

The first problem is that the increment/decrement keys don't work. If I do not include the final semi-colon in the locator, then they work correctly and increment or decrement the second portion of the locator (i.e., changing 17 to 18). However, as mentioned above, without the semi-colon, the second prefix is left out.

The second problem is that I can't figure out how to create a range that Sky recognizes as valid. For ranges, I need to have the full locators on both sides of the range. So, if instead of simply "17" for the second part of the locator I need to represent the range of "17-20", the final locator should appear as "X9Y17-X9Y20". The only formats I've found that don't generate an error message in Sky are "9.17;-9.20" or "9.17;-20" (that is, not including a semi-colon after the end of the range); however, the output I get from both of these repeats "17" -- X9Y17-X9Y1720.

Anyone have any suggestions about how to resolve these latest issues?

Thanks,
Kendra

[Millis Indexing]

For those (probably few) who have been following this, I believe I have discovered where I went wrong. Basically, by relegating the second part of my locator (17) to a defined section, I was turning it into something Sky did not recognize as equivalent to a page number, i.e., something that can be incremented/decremented or turned into a range. My workaround, although not ideal, is to use both a prefix and a suffix for the first part of the locator.

Before I was trying to add the prefix "X" to the first part, 9; I was then trying to add the prefix "Y" to the second part, 17. 

Now I am applying the prefix "X" and the suffix "Y" to the first part, 9. So when I type "9.17" Sky outputs "X9Y" followed by "17" with no space or punctuation -- X9Y17 -- just as I need it to be.

If all my locators were the same format, this is a workaround that would work perfectly well. Unfortunately, I am going to have a number of different types of locators for different elements in the text. Unless I can come up with a better solution at some point, I'm simply going to use this workaround for the majority of locators, mark the ones that are different, and make the necessary adjustments to those different ones manually at the end of the process. It still will be some additional clean-up work, but much less work overall then if I had to type everything for all the locators.

Best,
Kendra