January 29, 2002, Midlothian, Virginia. Virginia Systems has updated and is now shipping its automatic indexing, footnote/endnote mangement, and cross-reference generator plug-ins for InDesign 2.0. Also announced and shipping is a new high-end indexing plug-in named Sonar Bookends InDex Pro.
Sonar Bookends InDex
Sonar Bookends InDex, Virginia Systems' original indexing plug-in for InDesign, has been updated to support InDesign 2.0. The indexer can take a user-supplied list of items and make an index of them. Optionally, it can also create a list of proper nouns or a list of words based on frequency and index the items in the list after the list is edited by the user. The user also can mark text and index every occurrence of the marked items, even if the occurrence is not marked, or it can index only where the items are marked. Now included as a standard part of the product is a table of contents generator which uses style sheets to mark the table of contents entries.
Sonar Bookends InDex Pro
Sonar Bookends InDex Pro is a new addition to Virginia Systems' line up. The product boasts all of the features of regular Sonar Bookends InDex, but also has the following features:
* Ability ot parse English to find and index the subjects of sentences.
* Preview mode that lets the user see each item being indexed in context and then allows the user to pick-and-choose which occurrences actually get indexed. The user's choices are remembered and automatically applied to future indexes. This greatly speeds up making a complete and accurate index.
* Word lists can be optimized before indexing. Optimization can take singular and plural phrases and automatically combine them under the plural only. Thus, the two entries "Riverboat" and "Riverboats" would be combined into a single entry "Riverboats." Also, overlapping phrases can be handled. For example, if there where three entries "Black Bear," "Brown Bear," and "Bear", the optimized list would put the page numbers for "Bear" as all pages that mention a bear that is not either black or brown, since those categories were broken-out separately.
* More intelligent sorting. Articles and other words do not effect sorting order. Thus, "The United States" is sorted under the U's and not the T's.
* Improved name reversal. First and last names can be reversed automatically taking into account suffixes (Jr., Sr.), titles (M.D., PHD..), and two-word last names (Von Tree).
* Better user interface
Sonar Bookends InFnote
Sonar Bookends InFnote uses labels to associate each footnote/endnote reference with a particular footnote/endnote destination. In the updated plug-in, when creating a footnote/endnote reference or destination, the user can either select the desired label from a pop-up list of currently defined labels or a new label can be entered manually. Previously, the labels had to always be entered manually.
Sonar Bookends InXref
Sonar Bookends InXref also uses labels to associate references with destinations. In the updated plug-in, a label can be selected from a pop-up list of currently defined labels or a new label can be entered manually. Previously, all labels had to be entered manually. The new version also allows the user to define a "prefix" text that goes in front of the page number when the reference and destination are on different pages (See figure 6 on page 42). A "substitute" text is defined for cases where a reference and destination happen to be on the same page (See figure 6 on this page).
Sonar Bookends InDex, Sonar Bookends InFnote, and Sonar Bookends Xref are $195. Sonar Bookends InDex Pro is $395. Customers who bought Sonar Bookends InFnote or Sonar Bookends InXref previously can update for free. Sonar Bookends InDex update fee is $100. Sonar Bookends InDex owners can optionally upgrade to Sonar Bookends InDex Pro for $200.
A free demonstration copy of Sonar Bookends InDex, Sonar Bookends InDex Pro, Sonar Bookends Fnote, and Sonar Bookends Xref can be downloaded from Virginia Systems web site at: http://www.virginiasystems.com
Virginia Systems was founded in 1984 and specializes in document imaging, text retrieval, automatic index-generation, cross-referencing, and footnote software.
For further information, contact: Virginia Systems, 5509 West Bay Court, Midlothian, VA 23112-2506, Phone: (804) 739-3200, FAX: (804) 739-8376, Email: sales@virginiasystems.com, URL: www.virginiasystems.com