RE: indexing

[<jfleck inkstain net>]

On Mon, 31 Jul 2000, Gregory Leblanc wrote:

> > From: Mike Sangrey [mailto:mike@sojurn.lns.pa.us]
> > 
> > This has more to do with the semantics of an index; that is, 
> > why one provides 
> > an indexed term in the first place.
> > 
> > What the index user is looking for is some content about `foo'.  The 
> > assumption is that the section will provide that content.  
> > One doesn't want to 
> > index every occurrence of `foo', just the ones that provide content.
> 
> By this same token, it would make more sense to link to the paragraph where
> the term occurs, not to the section.  A section could be dozens of
> paragraphs, and perhaps only 1 of those is relavent.  Given that, it should
> link to where the indexer has put the indexterm markup, and assume that the
> indexer is smarter than the script is (which SHOULD be the case).  
> 	Greg
> 
Ah, now we're getting somewhere.

So what Mike is suggesting is that when picking our indexterms, we need to
be thinking about places where broader concepts like "foo" are explained,
rather than specific words like "bar" are used? So here a link to the
start of a section would be what you'd want.

And what Greg is suggesting is a more narrow use of the indexterm, to lead
the index user to a specific occurrence of "bar", (or the aforementioned
"foo", for that matter). So we'd need to link to the specific paragraph.

I've no preference for either of these - just trying to understand how to
think about these questions.

John