Sky 8 not sorting again

20 views
Skip to first unread message

AElfwine Mischler

unread,
Dec 23, 2020, 10:01:44ā€ÆAM12/23/20
to SkyInd...@googlegroups.com
Hi. Iā€™ve already written to Kamm and I donā€™t expect answers here, just a bit of commiseration. Iā€™m trying to finish the book that I had trouble with nine days ago. At that time I opened a new file and merged with the corrupted one. I thought things wereĀ 
OK, but I usually keep the grid in entry order while working, so I didnā€™t see until today when Iā€™m editing that things are not sorting correctly, both main entries and subentries.

A few other quirky things are happening too. Like Sky found and replaced MOST of the cases of ibn with ignored text, but it didnā€™t replace ALL of them. And the alphabet navigation in the grid isnā€™t working right.

I did the usual closing, rebooting, refreshing. Nada.

Well, at least Sky isnā€™t ruining a holiday for me. šŸ¤ØĀ 

Ɔlfwine Mischler
Personal email: aelfwine...@gmail.com
Member, Editorial Freelancers Assoc. (EFA)
Member, American Society for Indexing (ASI)

AElfwine Mischler

unread,
Dec 24, 2020, 2:13:36ā€ÆPM12/24/20
to SkyInd...@googlegroups.com
Thanks for suggestions and commiserations. Most of the words that are not sorting do NOT have special characters, and Iā€™ve used these characters many times before with no such problem.

I sent Kamm my file and he merged it into a new file and sent me a new template, as he thought the old one was corrupted. He said it works, but it doesnā€™t sort correctly for me. When I told him that, he sent me the RTF from that index.

I tried to open it on my old computer, but first I had to update SKY to 8.0.13. Then when I tried to open Sky, I got an error message. So I canā€™t try on that computer yet. (AND when I opened a Word file on the old computer, Microsoft had the nerve to tell me that it was unlicensed. No, Iā€™ve paid for it. One more thing to deal with on Monday.)

At some point in recent weeks I updated Sky to 8.0.13 on the new (current) computer. Now Iā€™m wondering if something in the update is causing this problem. If I try uninstalling Sky, Iā€™m not sure how to re-install it. From the same exe file now on my computer, or download it again from Sky? That might require tech support if I run into a glitch.

Iā€™m not going to expect any help over Christmas. Iā€™ve told the publisher about the problem, but I want to go ahead and keep editing. (There are things I should have picked up too.) If worse comes to worst, I could probably alphabetize in Word....I just have to figure how what happens with subentries. And they need their sorting corrected too. šŸ˜©

At least I have no Christmas to be ruined. (Always look on the bright side.)


Ɔlfwine Mischler
Personal email: aelfwine...@gmail.com
Member, Editorial Freelancers Assoc. (EFA)
Member, American Society for Indexing (ASI)

On Dec 24, 2020, at 5:23 AM, Richard Shrout <rssh...@gmail.com> wrote:

AElfine,




I learned a long time ago in another world a very valuable question to ask when trying to solve a problem like this one. The question is simple and is the first one that I asked here: What is different about this situation? Something has to be different to suddenly cause all this sorting difficulty. It could also be something to do with your computer. Is there anything different there?

So I hope you get all this figured out soon.

Happy holiday season.

Richard

--
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 on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/skyindexusers/4191468B-BD9D-423D-B559-06E3AE221FED%40gmail.com.

AElfwine Mischler

unread,
Dec 28, 2020, 1:45:48ā€ÆPM12/28/20
to Deborah Patton, SKYIndexUsers
Well, I tried uninstalling and re-installingĀ Sky 8, and I still have the same problem. Kamm sent me the RTF of the file he made from my index, and his is sorted correctly -- except for all the names beginning with < (to be translated to ayn) at the top. I sent him my RTF with the sorting totallyĀ messed up.

He sent me a template again. When I load that template into the file, it sorts correctly. But as soon as I tell it to ignore the half circles for ayn and hamza, ALL the alphabetizing gets messed up. And not always in the same way.

He did give me a link now to download the newest version from the website, but I'm wondering if I should go back to 8.0.10 if that is possible. (The exe file I used for re-installing installed 8.0.13.) I've used these settings and these diacritics many times before, and I've never had any problem like this. Is there really no one else here using 8.0.13 having sorting problems?Ā 

Kamm thinks that it is unlikely that the program got messed up in the download. He says if it was so corrupted to not alphabetize, it shouldn't run at all.

I have to admit, I'm beginning to be tempted to learn to use Cindex. Going back to Sky 7 is NOT a viable option, as some have suggested. I've just finished one of three volumes of a huge work, and there are a gazillion names with diacritics. (6,000 records just in the Name Index) There is no way I'd be able to code that much.

I'm waiting to see what he says about going back to 8.0.10, and I'm going to manually fix the sorting in Word so I can get this to the client. But I can't start on Volume 2 of the big project until I'm sure the software is running OK.

BTW -- when you all reply to my questions, it appears that they come only to me and not to the group. I think that must be a setting in the group and I wish it could be changed. Others might benefit from seeing the replies.

Thanks.

AElfwine
(At least my problem with Microsoft got straightened out easily.)

AElfwine Mischler
Personal email:Ā aelfwine...@gmail.com
Member, Editorial Freelancers Assoc. (EFA)
Member, American Society for Indexing (ASI)




On Thu, Dec 24, 2020 at 10:17 PM Deborah Patton <ma...@pattonindexing.com> wrote:
You have a license for Sky. In case you don't have that written down somewhere handy, details about it are here: Help>About
Sometimes installations have hiccups (though most of the time they don't) so uninstalling is a great idea. I'd then install it with the most current .exe you have - and if it asks for license information, you'll be ready. You may still need to update it after you install it.
Uninstalling doesn't touch you sk8 files so don't worry about them.
Hope this fixes this problem that is so perplexing --
Deborah




ā€ā€ā€ā€ā€ā€ā€ Original Message ā€ā€ā€ā€ā€ā€ā€

Angela Hall

unread,
Dec 28, 2020, 3:07:56ā€ÆPM12/28/20
to AElfwine Mischler, Deborah Patton, SKYIndexUsers
Sounds like youā€™re better off with Sky 7? Iā€™m still on that ! Works perfectly for everything I need to do and I produce some complicated indexes! Over here in the U.K. we have a saying. ā€œIf it ainā€™t broke, donā€™t fix itā€!

Angela Hall Advanced Professional Indexer


On 28 Dec 2020, at 18:45, AElfwine Mischler <aelfwine...@gmail.com> wrote:

ļ»æ

AElfwine Mischler

unread,
Dec 28, 2020, 3:40:40ā€ÆPM12/28/20
to Angela Hall, SKYIndexUsers
No, Sky 7 is not better for me, and I said that in my last message. I do a lot of indexes with Arabic names that use diacritics. In Sky 7 I had to set up the translation manager, and then use four keystrokes for each letter that had a dot under it or macron over it: {h.}, {a-}, etc. In Sky 8 I can copy and paste -- unless the designer did something weird in the typesetting. In one recent book, I had to code all the letters that had dots under them, but the ones with macrons copied OK.Ā 

Still waiting to hear from Kamm if there's a way to go back to 8.0.10.


AElfwine Mischler
Personal email:Ā aelfwine...@gmail.com
Member, Editorial Freelancers Assoc. (EFA)
Member, American Society for Indexing (ASI)



Angela Hall

unread,
Dec 28, 2020, 3:59:44ā€ÆPM12/28/20
to AElfwine Mischler, SKYIndexUsers
But in Sky 7 Iā€™ve done complicated indexes with diacritics. I just amend the word document and add the diacritics at that stage . Yes itā€™s fiddly but I find it better than all this other agonising about various hassles with Sky Ā 8


Angela Hall Advanced Professional Indexer


On 28 Dec 2020, at 20:40, AElfwine Mischler <aelfwine...@gmail.com> wrote:

ļ»æ
Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages