Tips for Indexing Students

Below are some useful tips for someone just getting started with SKY Index Professional. It is highly recommended that you read them all.

Cross-references (general)

Cross-references must always be placed in the Page field.

All cross-references should start with the phrase "xref" followed by the target of the cross-reference. SKY Index will automatically determine the appropriate cross-reference type - "see" or "see also". Do not try to format the phrase "xref".  SKY Index will format your cross-reference according to the settings in the Cross-references tab of the Index Options dialog. Example - if you enter:

It will be generated as:

    cars, 1. see also trucks

Cross-references (configuring)

The best way to configure a new index’s cross-reference positioning is to use the Index Options Style tab. Once you choose the appropriate Preset for your new index, choose the Variant that is appropriate for your cross-reference placement. This is usually all you need to do. If you need to further fine-tune your cross-reference, just click the Cross-references tab and make any additional adjustments there. For information on each of the settings on that dialog, just press F1 while looking at the dialog or refer to the manual that was installed as a PDF file when you installed your demo software.

Generating a formatted index as a word processor file

When you choose Index>Edit/View, SKY Index will automatically generate your index and then display it in the word processor that you specified in the Word Processor tab of the Program Options dialog. You can generate the file without calling up your word processor by choosing Index>Generate. The generated index will have the same name as your index, but will have .RTF filename extension.

The default setting for SKY Index is to generate an index with headers, footers and columns. If you want an index without those things and with just one long continuous column, choose Options>Document and then click the Output Format tab. Change the Preset from “RTF” to “RTF Plain”.

AutoComplete

If AutoComplete is adding a word to a phrase that you don’t want, just end the phrase with two spaces and press tab to go to the next field. The trailing spaces will be removed automatically. For example, if you entered “stories of magic” and you want to enter just stories. SKY Index will probably add the words “of magic” after you type “stories”. Just press two spaces after stories to stop SKY Index from AutoCompleting that phrase.

If you want to temporarily stop AutoComplete, just start your entry with a space. The space will be removed automatically when you move to the next field.

Deleting a row in the grid

If you want to delete a row in the grid, you can put the grid marquee (the blue box) over any field in the row you want to delete and then choose Edit>Select Record. Finally, choose Edit>Delete or just press the Delete key on your keyboard.

Groups

If you want to see all index entries in your index that contain a particular word or phrase, just choose Group>Group on Text.

To get back to your full, ungroup, choose Group>Ungroup or press Ctrl+Shift+U. You can also exit the group by choosing one of the following three Views from the View menu: As Entered, Sorted, Page Ordered.

There are other ways to group too. Look at the Group menu for the functions that mention grouping. You can also use the Find/Replace function to create groups.

Characters with diacritic marks

You may need to enter some characters with diacritic marks for one or more of your lessons. In general, you can use the Character Map (Tools>Character Map) to find and insert special characters. However, for the more common characters with diacritic marks, you can use some keyboard shortcuts that will make the process much easier. See Keyboard Shortcuts for Entering Characters with Diacritic Marks later in this chapter for more information.

Since SKY Index uses the Windows ANSI character set for displaying characters, there may be rare cases where you need to access characters that are not part of the ANSI character set and are therefore not displayable within SKY Index. These characters can be accessed and become part of the final generated index by using the Translation Table feature of SKY Index. For more information on this, please choose Help>Search for Help On and then find the topic “Diacritic Characters, coding for with the Translation Table”.

Keyboard Shortcuts for Entering Characters with Diacritic Marks

The following keyboard shortcuts have been tested under Windows XP and Windows Vista with SKY Index and are known to work.

How to enter diacritic characters using keyboard shortcuts

Below is a list of characters that you can enter using keyboard shortcuts. To enter them, press the Control key on your keyboard and then press one of the modifiers shown below. Then release both keys and type the letter you wish to enter. For example, to get â, type Ctrl+^ and then type 'a'. For a capital letter, just type an uppercase 'a' instead of a lowercase 'a'.

 There are no shortcuts for these characters.

 ý, Ý, ÿ, Ÿ, å, Å, æ, Æ, œ, Œ, ð, Ð, ø, Ø, ¿, ¡, ß