how can I make an a to z index?

[adrienne]

This seems a basic question but my brain is hurting with it. I have some basic HTML documentation (help files) and I have a earch engine going on it, but some users would prefer an a to z index of terms with links. How do I do this? I am stumped to see how I could work it.
I am sure there is probably a very obvious answer but I am afraid that I can't work out the logistics of it. Any ideas? (I use DW for my HTML pages and to organise the help project).
Thanks a lot

[ronaldb66]

There is no easy answer: hard work.

Indexing is considered a profession all by itself by those that make a living out of it, and most people that don't and have tried it agree with them.

Making a decent index requires good understanding of the underlying principles and some experience; you can get by without it if you're satisfied with a basic one, but finding just which keywords are worth indexing and which synonym and cross references are required is a whole other ball game.

I read up on some basics in an IA book, but I'm sure there's specific literature on the subject; I'll have to look it up again.

[yeti]

try using definition lists, they are intended to be used for glossarys and indeces.

example (taken from selfhtml documentation http://selfhtml.org):

<dl>
<dt>AA</dt>
<dd>Auto Answer (Modem)</dd>
<dt>AAE</dt>
<dd>Allgemeine Anschalte-Erlaubnis</dd>
<dt>AARP</dt>
<dd>Appletalk Address Resolution Protocol</dd>
<!-- usw. -->
</dl>

[adrienne]

I realise that what I meant was how to create an index AUTOMATICALLY, so I didn't have to go and manually create the index at the end - I used to index books in my last job so I have the content part ok, but I was wondering if there was some clever way of extracting a particular tag, or some other information, because if I have to index the whole doc with links, I am in for a long haul !!!!!
Sorry that my initial question was not very helpful

[yeti]

I'm sure that there are a bunch of indexing programs/scripts out there (spiders/crawlers/robots do indexing all the time, aren't they?).
I would take a look around for some indexing scripts. I remember that I once used a program, that made a list of all files in a specified folder.

What kind of doc do you want to index?

[ronaldb66]

As Yeti already indicated, automatic indexing is the bread and butter for the search engine people: you may need to look in that direction, but I wonder if they're willing to share their highly valued secrets with you... :o

I'm sure at least one CF member, Pennimus, is active in the SEO field; perhaps he can give you some pointers.

[ronaldb66]

Oaky, I did a bit of Googling for "document indexing script program" and found a couple of commercial systems; this one on the second page (http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Carl_Staelin/cs236601/software.html) (or was it the third...?) lists a number of related systems/scripts which seem to be open source or released under GPL; you might find something here (you're likely far more familiar with the whole indexing business then me anyway...).

[adrienne]

Just to answer some of the questions, it's a piece of technical documentation, laid out like a self-contained web site, just HTML pages. I have a search engine set up, maybe I can reconfigure something to look for just a selection of words? I use DevaSearch as a search engine, it is JS based and I find it to be really good (as a search engine in any case). It creates an index, maybe there is some way of exploiting that, I hadn't considered that possibility.
I guess I could then always adjust some things manually...