The Indexer is a program designed for indexing yearbooks. Through the use of intuitive, powerful features, The Indexer can drastically reduce the amount of time spent indexing a yearbook.
The Indexer includes out of the box support for first, middle, and last names, titles, class levels, and up to thirty pages indexed per person. Capitalization mistakes are automatically fixed (although this option can be turned off), indexes can be sorted alphabetically or reverse alphabetically, and exported as text in virtually any format. Full find facilities combined with the intuitive interface allow for quick and easy retrieval and altering of information in the index.
An extensive set of user preferences allows complete control over how The Indexer handles names and presents data. The Indexer always keeps the user informed of any problems in the index, and makes sure they are fixed before they become even more of a problem in the future.
I think you’ll find the feature set of this program perfect for your yearbook indexing needs.
2. Starting The Indexer
On launching The Indexer, the following dialog box will be presented:
By default, the first item is selected, which allows you to begin a new index. If you choose this option, a new, blank index will be opened, and you can start typing in names at once. If you have used The Indexer before, and have an index you have saved, choose the second option and The Indexer will prompt you for a file to open. If, at any point, you decide that you do not want to see this dialog box anymore, click on the check box that reads “Don’t show this screen again on startup.” If you do that, The Indexer will automatically open a new, blank index on startup. You can turn the window on and off in the Viewing Prefs preferences box.
Clicking on the “OK” button will dismiss the dialog box, and perform the action specified. Each of the above options has a distinct result. These will be covered individually in the next few sections. The first option, creating a new index, will bring up the Enter by Name dialog box, which is discussed in the next section.
3. Entering names into the index
Entering names into the index can take several forms. Names can be entered in one at a time, entered in many at a time, read from a text file, or obtained from an Indexer file. This section explains, in detail, how to use each of the methods of input.
3.1 Entering names individually
If you choose to have a new, blank index opened for you, the following screen will appear (with blank fields, instead of having them filled in):
The fields and buttons within the “Current Name” box apply to the current name. This is where you enter all the information for an individual. Filling in all fields is not required. The only required field is the last name field, which The Indexer verifies that you have filled in for each entry. You can press tab, press shift-tab, or click to move between fields.
The field, list and buttons within the “Page Information” box apply to the pages that are indexed to an individual. Pages that you wish to index should be typed into the ‘Page Entry’ field. Clicking on the “Add Page” button (or pressing return while typing in the ‘Page Entry’ field) will add the pages you have typed in to the current name. Pages can be typed in more than one at a time, separated by commas and/or spaces, or they can be typed in one at a time, and pressing return will select the text so you can type over it instantaneously.
Following is a description of each of the buttons in the “Enter By Name” window, and a short description of what they do.
• ”New Name” – saves the information in the fields to the current name, creates a new, blank name in the index, and moves the insertion point to the last name field.
• “Delete Name” – Deletes the current name from the index. Be aware that this action is not undoable, although it is always possible to close the current index without saving it and re-open it, as long as you have saved frequently, which is always a good idea.
• ”Add Pages” – Interprets the text in the ‘Page Entry’ field, and adds those pages to the index for the current name.
• ”Remove Page” – removes the page that is currently selected in the list (if any). If there are no pages, or there are no pages selected, this button does nothing.
• ”Clear Pages” – Clears all pages from this name, so the name no longer has any pages indexed to it.
3.1.1 Keeping track of names
If there is more than one name in the index, the “Enter By Name” window may look like this:
The scroll bar along the bottom of the window switches between names in the index, and the text below shows the number of the name that is displayed, as well as the total number of names in the index. When switching between names, all the fields are updated to show the information for the current name.
3.1.2 Automatic capitalization correction
By default, The Indexer automatically corrects any capitalization mistakes that are made when entering names. For example, if you were to enter “clements” into the last name field, after you press ‘Tab’, “clements” would automatically change to “Clements” to reflect proper capitalization. The Indexer is aware of common anomalies such as McLean, D’Angelo, or Aguilar-Cruz, where two capitalizations are required. The Indexer only automatically capitalized first, middle, and last names. Titles and classes are not automatically capitalized.
3.1.3 First Line QuickEntry
Because The Indexer was specially written to handle names, many of the common formats for entering names are automatically recognized by The Indexer. Most importantly, these include ‘LastName, FirstName MiddleName” and “FirstName MiddleName LastName.” Entering a name in one of these formats on the first line will automatically extract the first, middle (if given) and last name, and place them in the proper fields, shown below:
3.1.4 Class Entry
The Indexer handles classes in a unique method. For standardization, The Indexer stores classes in memory as numbers instead of text. What this allows The Indexer to do is to always use the proper class name when displaying a name or exporting an index. What it uses is a set of internal definitions for classes (that are modifiable by the user, see a later section entitled “Making class associations.”). Entering in a shortcut (such as “Frosh” for “Freshman”) will tell The Indexer that the current name is in 9th grade (these are the defaults, and are not required). The grade number can also be entered, and The Indexer will display the default text. The defaults for The Indexer are “Senior” - 12th grade, “Junior” - 11th grade, “Sophomore” - 10th grade, “Freshman” or “Frosh” - 9th grade, “Eighth” - 8th grade, “Seventh” - 7th grade. Case sensitivity is defined by the options in the “Find Prefs” section of the preferences. An example is shown below:
3.1.5 Page Entry
Indexing pages is extremely simple, and consists only of typing the pages into the ‘Page List’ field. Pages can be entered in one at a time, or separated by commas and/or spaces. For example, typing “1, 2 5, 18” and pressing return (or enter) would index the current name to pages 1, 2, 5, and 18. The Indexer automatically sorts pages, and makes sure that the same page is not indexed twice to the same person. There is a maximum of 30 pages indexed per individual.
3.2 Entering many names
Choosing “Enter By Page” from the “Views” menu will bring up the following window:
The large area in the center of the window is for typing or pasting text (for example, some text from a PageMaker document). The small field in the middle contains the page number that these names should be indexed to. Leaving this value at 0 just adds the names to the index without indexing them to a particular page.
The “Add to Index” button adds the names in the text to the index. Be aware of the state of the check box in the lower left hand corner that reads “Check index only, don‘t add names.” By default, this item is checked, and only the names currently in the index will be indexed. Other words or names that The Indexer runs across are ignored. This is actually a very important feature which will be explained later. However, if you wish to add names to the index, this box should not be marked.
The format of names that can be typed in include the following types,
• FirstName [MiddleName] Last Name [Pages] <return>
Items in [brackets] are optional, and <return> means that a hard-return is located after the name.
A partial view of a list of names may look like the following:
If the ‘Index these names to page’ field is 0, then pressing Enter (return will place a return in the text) will cause these four presidents to be added to the index. If there was a page listed, all four presidents would be listed to that page.
Actually, pressing Enter will cause the “Guess Type” dialog box to come up, which attempts to guess the type of the data, but in case the estimate is incorrect, The Indexer verifies the choice. The type of data that The Indexer expects is important, and drastically affects how the data is interpreted. However, this dialog can be permanently dismissed by checking the “Don’t show again” checkbox in the dialog box. (It can be turned back on in the “Viewing Prefs” portion of the preferences.)
3.3 Reading names from a text file
The Indexer also supports importing names from a text file. These names can be in any of the formats that were listed above for the “Enter By Name” dialog box. The Indexer can handle any size file, limited only by the memory that was given to it by the Finder (this setting can be changed by clicking on The Indexer and choosing “Get Info” from the “File” menu in the finder.) Use the “Open…” command in the “File” menu to open a text file. Be aware that opening a new text file will erase the current contents of the index. The Indexer will give a warning if any of the contents have been changed, and will allow them to be saved before opening the new file.
If you simply want to append the text file to the current index, use the “Merge Index…” command instead of the “Open…” command. This command will add the names in the file to the end of the current index.
3.4 Opening an index file
The Indexer can read index files made on any other Macintosh, whether it is a PowerMacintosh or a 680x0 model. To open an index file, choose “Open…” from the “File” menu, and find the index. Be aware that opening an index will erase the current contents of the index. The Indexer will give a warning if any of the contents have been changed, and will allow them to be saved before opening the new file.
If you simply want to append the index file to the current index, use the “Merge Index…” command instead of the “Open…” command. This command will add the names in the file to the end of the current index.
