The Index Designer provides a graphical way to add keywords to your index and link topics to them. All you need to do is open your project, click the Index tab, and add keywords and topics. You can even drag and drop topics from the Topic List into the Index Designer to quickly add keywords and link topics to them at the same time.
You can add both topic keywords and index file keywords. The Index Designer identifies each kind with a unique icon.
You can also use the Index Designer to create ALink names and link topics to them. Unlike keywords, ALink names are not displayed in the compiled index. Authors use them as navigation aids (by adding ALink controls to topics).
There are numerous ways to work with keywords in the Index Designer. For example, you can:
Manually type keywords and drag and drop the topics that should use them.
Drag and drop topics to create keywords and assign topics to them at the same time.
Create subkeywords from the right-click menu to build a multi-level index.
Use the toolbar arrow buttons to move keywords in and out of hierarchies (for multi-level indexing).
Rename existing keywords.
Remove keywords from the index.
Look up the names of all topics that are associated to a keyword.
ALink names (known as A-keywords in WinHelp) are terms that you can associate with any number of topics as a way to group them together and provide common ways to link to them. Although these names are not displayed at the index tab, you can use the Index Designer to work with them. For example, you can:
Manually type ALink names and drag and drop topics that you want to assign to them.
Drag and drop topics to create ALink names and assign topics to them at the same time.
Rename existing ALink names.
Remove ALink names from your project.
Look up the names of all topics that are assigned to an ALink name.