Sonar Bookends Professional
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User-supplied list

A user-supplied list is a list of word/phrase list that was provided by someone else, or perhaps as an export from a database. I've used this method often and found it to be a great time saver and very easy to do.

In the figure below, I have opened a word/phrase list from our catalogue. Since our catalogue is generated from a database, I have a field in the database with each product name. The list is exported from the database in alphabetical order, but that's not necessary.

Figure 2 You must always begin with a word list. You may type your own or open one that has been generated elsewhere. Any word-processing document will do.

When using QuarkXPress or PageMaker, getting or creating a word list is your first step. Once you have a word list, launch the Sonar Bookends Professional application (most likely found in your applications folder), and you will have a Sonar Bookends Professional palette on your desktop. Many of the functions found in the Sonar Bookends Professional menus, have shortcut access in this palette. From the left they are: Build a subject list, reverse first and last names, sort alphabetically, create a multiple-level list, and create the index.

Working with a PDF

If you are working with a Word document, first save it as a PDF. Once you have a PDF from Word or any other another source, Sonar Bookends Professional has an automatic PDF reader built into the application. This means that instead of first using the export to Sonar function from within QuarkXPress or PageMaker, you can process the PDF directly.

Note: If a PDF does not begin on page 1, then you must indicate its starting page number in the name of the file. For example, if your file name is magazine and the document starts on page 24, you could name the file: magazine#24#.pdf. Using this format, Sonar Bookends Professional will translate this new file name and understand that the file starts on page 24. (The syntax is "#" page number "#"). This is very important in order to return the correct page number of the entry.

Creating a subject list

The first button on the Sonar Bookends Professional palette prompts the subject list dialogue box. Using this feature, you can extract from a PDF, QuarkXPress, PageMaker, or InDesign document a list of subjects to be indexed using Virginia Systems’ proprietary English-language parsing engine. The subject list can be filtered using various criteria, including capitalization rules, inclusion or exclusion of numeric values, the number of times a subject appears, and the maximum and minimum number of words that can make up a subject. These options are shown in the figure below and are accessed using index > build subject word/phrase list.

Figure 3a Sonar Bookends Professional can automatically generate a subject list directly from a PDF or other supported file formats (as shown below) by defining parameters in the subject list dialogue box.

It's very easy to create a subject list. Set the options as you wish, then click OK. From the resulting dialogue box, choose a PDF or other supported file type, or select a folder that contains multiple PDFs (using the proper naming convention as described above) or other supported file types, and Sonar Bookends Professional will build a subject list from the selected file or folder of files.

Figure 3b Rather than a simple list of words, a subject list actually generates a collection of phrases — subjects — for which you may generate an index. This extremely powerful option will shave dozens of hours off a detailed index production cycle.

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