IndexMatic² Quick Demo | Last-Name, First-Name Queries
March 17, 2018 | IndexMatic² | en | fr
Collecting proper names is one of the most common tasks assigned to IndexMatic². While the best strategy remains the one based on character styles, not all InDesign books are prepared to receive style-driven queries. Instead, you may have a comprehensive list of <LastName>, <FirstName> items…
When the list of indexed TERMS is known in advance, what you have to do is to go back to the KEYS, and then format your IndexMatic² queries so that they capture these keys and output those terms.
If the final index entries have the form <LastName>, <FirstName> (e.g, Jobs, Steve) it may be assumed as a first approximation that querying <LastName> (i.e, Jobs) is sufficient to identify a match. Of course—as the very example of "Jobs" shows—this strategy may still lead to homonymic ambiguities, so manually refining some queries remains a necessity.
Now, to convert the initial list into a clean query list, the method I suggest is to replace each
<LastName>, <FirstName>
by
<LastName> => <LastName>, <FirstName>
Noting that $0 always represents the match, you can even shorten the query as follows:
<LastName> => $0, <FirstName>
Note: When dealing with proper nouns, do not forget to force case sensitivity in IndexMatic².
But, how do you quickly transform the original list into the desired format? Easy! Execute Find/Change in InDesign and use the following GREP:
Find what: ([^,]+)(.+)
Change to: $1 => \$0$2
Then your query list is ready to run in IndexMatic²:
• See also:
— IndexMatic² Manual (PDF);
— IndexMatic² | Frequently Asked Questions.
