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Index in ePub: Converting index to cross-references?

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    • March 30, 2011 at 10:09 am #59116
      jpannier
      Member

      Creating an ePub is like inventing the wheel again. There’re so many issues which should be easy like to snap one’s fingers. But it is like it is ;-).

      I’ve got a book with an index for names e. g. Aristoteles 12, 25, 456. Is there any way to convert this index into cross-references? During the export to ePub those will come across. Index entries will be ignored completely – so neither the anchor nor the page link.

      Maybe there’s a workaround, a script, a trick with the story editor, …

    • April 3, 2011 at 2:31 pm #59157
      meanwhile
      Member

      Try Anne Marie Concepcion's excellent tutorial on epub on Lynda.com? It helped me with the hyperlinks in my TOC.

    • April 5, 2011 at 9:52 am #59176
      Anne-Marie Concepcion
      Member

      JPannier, auto-generated TOCs and Indexes are ignored when you export to EPUB. I showed in my Lynda.com title that meanwhile refers to how you can export an auto-generated TOC to RTF format, then import that into the ID file, which forces its inclusion in the EPUB. You could do the same thing with an index, I suspect.

      However you're going to have a problem with links. The (linked) page numbers don't apply to an EPUB, since it's reflowable… there is no concept of page numbers. (Except, just recently, with the Kindle format, when you need to refer to a page in the printed version of the book.) Honestly I'm not sure how people are dealing with indexes in their EPUBs. Maybe someone else can chime in, or you can post the question to a forum that's specializing in ebook creation, like https://mobileread.com/.

      AM

    • April 5, 2011 at 10:19 am #59179
      jpannier
      Member

      Hi Anne-Marie,
      thanks for your thoughts. Sure I know your Lynda.com title ;-). And you don’t have to go the way around with the rtf. It’s enough when you cut the index/toc and place it back directly in InDesign. Then the export will ‘see’ it. Don’t ask me why.

      Yes, my problems are the links within the index. I was wondering if there is a possibility to change the kind of entry – in this case from a hyperlink to a page to a hyperlink to the corresponding index-entry. This would make sense – even in an ePub.

      I started to add a marker additionally to the (in this case) name of an author. Then I changed the hyperlink in the index from page based to text anchor based. If I now look in story editor view at the name of an author in the story I have these two little signs.
      But to be honest – this is all crap. It’s a book and I’m using CS5 and you know what happens to links within book files. So instead I’m doing all this creasy workarounds and fixing the links in the html docs. It would be easier, the user would do a text search within the ePub ;-).

      Thanks for the link tipp.

      Jeldrik

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