Merging indexitems

187538

When I have an index that looks like this:

<indexitem text="Files">
<indexitem text="batch">
<indexentry target="batchfiles" text="Batch Files"/>
</indexitem>
<indexitem text="database">
<indexentry target="dbfiles" text="Database Files"/>
</indexitem>
</indexitem>

the locators (i.e. targets) for the two secondary indexitems are also included as hits in the primary indexitem. We would prefer that not to happen. Is there any way that I can do this, or can this behavior be changed in a later version?

Jeff

jrstephe-Oracle

When the user clicks on a primary keyword, we
create the list of topics by adding the topics
associated directly with the primary keyword
first, then we append the topics associated
with the subkeywords.

This seems like a reasonable approach to us.
In particular, it is possible in Oracle Help
to have a primary keyword that does not have
any topics associated directly with it. In
other words, a primary keyword can be used
simply as a container of subkeywords. When
clicking on a primary keyword with no topics
directly associated, I think showing the topics
associated with subkeywords is beneficial.

If there is a case where the above approach
isn't reasonable, or you simply would prefer
we don't merge, we could add a way to configure
it in a future release. What do you think?

187538

In general, that is a reasonable approach. We simply have a huge helpset and are working to improve our index. One of the types of index that we envision where this approach is particularly bad is something like this:

commands
ANTYPE
NLGEOM
...

where topics with general information on issuing commands could be linked under the primary indexterm and topics with information specific to a particular command would be grouped under the secondary indexterm. That is a somewhat contrived example, but in general, due to the sheer size of information we're handling, this approach leads to several cases of "bloated" primary indexterms.

I would be more than happy if this were a feature that I could configure, either using the Java API or as an attribute in the indexfile itself. (e.g. <index version="1.1" mergesecondaries="no">). If you really feel like having fun, you could allow index authors to specify this on a per-indexitem basis.

Jeff