Sonar Bookends Professional
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Multiple-level lists

In additional to your run-of-the-mill, single-level list, Sonar Bookends Professional can generate a multiple-level list and it can convert a single-level list to a multiple-level list automatically. The way it works is easy: items in the single-level list are first sorted, then grouped by association, and finally split into various levels, as necessary. This is common with proper noun lists that include several first names sharing the same last name (as shown below).

Figure 8 On the left is a list of names (last name followed by first name). In a multiple-level list, the last name is the first level and other names that share this last name are indented one level.

Sorting options

In the final document, most indices are listed alphabetically. With Sonar Bookends Professional, this is automatic for both single-level and multiple-level lists (the multiple levels will, of course, be handled in a manner that keeps the related levels together). There's no need to worry about presorting your list, and you can control the sorting order (collating sequence). The sorting process takes into account names starting with articles and non-alphabetic characters. This means that The Netherlands is sorted under the letter N and not under the letter T. There is an additional facility to ignore leading punctuation.

Figure 9a Let's start with a simple list of names...

Figure 9b ...swap last names and first names...

Figure 9b ...and perform a simple alphabetic sort.

Tapping into the document

Using InDesign? Click here to jump to Sonar Bookends InDex and Sonar Bookends InDex Pro.

If you are indexing a QuarkXPress or PageMaker document, you will use the Sonar XTensions module that came with the Sonar Bookends Professional application to export the word occurrence and relative page-number information from the document. If you are using a Word document, convert it first to a PDF to ensure that you retain proper pagination information.

Since Sonar Bookends Professional has a built-in PDF reader, the PDF could actually be from any source. This means that you could build an index for a document that you created entirely in Illustrator, Photoshop, TextEdit, or any other application. As long as you have a multi-page document that you can save as a PDF, the originating application is irrelevant. In fact, with Acrobat's merge PDFs feature, you could collate PDFs from multiple sources (even QuarkXPress, if you were so inclined), and then generate a single index for the collection of documents.

Figure 10 This is the menu option from within QuarkXPress once I have loaded the Sonar XTensions module. Note that unless you have also purchased SonarTOC, your menu options may differ. Click here for more on SonarTOC.

Processing the pages from QuarkXPress or PageMaker is as easy as a single menu selection. Open your document, choose Sonar > Export to Sonar.... Place this file where you can easily find it when you move to the next step of generating the index.

If you are using a PDF, generating the index is even simpler. Just skip this step and go right into the next section.

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