HXINDEX(1) 5.x HXINDEX(1)
HTML-XML-utils HTML-XML-utils
21 Nov 2008
NAME
hxindex - insert an index into an HTML document
SYNOPSIS
hxindex [ -t ] [ -x ] [ -n ] [ -f ] [ -r ] [ -c classes ] [ -b base ] [
-i indexdb ] [--] [ file-or-URL ]
DESCRIPTION
The hxindex looks for terms to be indexed in a document, collects
them, turns them into target anchors and creates a sorted index as an
HTML list, which is inserted at the place of a placeholder in the
document. The resulting document is written to standard output. The
index is inserted at the place of a comment of the form
<!--index-->
or between two comments of the form
<!--begin-index-->
...
<!--end-index-->
In the latter case, all existing content between the two comments is
removed first. Index terms are either elements of type <dfn> or
elements with a class attribute of "index". (For backward
compatibility, also class attributes "index-inst" and "index-def" are
recognized.) <dfn> elements (and class "index-def") are considered
more important than elements with class "index" and will appear in
bold in the generated index. The option -c adds additional classes,
that are aliases for "index". By default, the contents of the element
are taken as the index term. Here are two examples of occurrences of
the index term "shoe":
A <dfn>shoe</dfn> is a piece of clothing that...
completed by a leather <span class="index">shoe</span>...
If the term to be indexed is not equal to the contents of the element,
the title attribute can be used to give the correct term:
... <dfn title="shoe">Shoes</dfn> are pieces of clothing that...
... with two leather <span class="index" title="shoe">shoes</span>...
The title attribute must also be used when the index term is a subterm
of another. Subterms appear indented in the index, under their head
term. To define a subterm, use a title attribute with two exclamation
marks ("!!") between the term and the subterm, like this:
<dfn title="shoe!!leather">...</dfn>
<dfn title="shoe!!invention of">...</dfn>
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HXINDEX(1) 5.x HXINDEX(1)
HTML-XML-utils HTML-XML-utils
21 Nov 2008
<em class="index" title="shoe!!protective!!steel nosed">...</em>
As the last example above shows, there can be multiple levels of sub-
subterms. The title attribute also allows multiple index terms to be
associated with a single occurrence. The multiple terms are separated
with a vertical bar ("|"). Compare the following examples with the
ones above:
<dfn title="shoe|boot">...</dfn>
<dfn title="shoe!!invention of|inventions!!shoe">...</dfn>
These two elements both insert two terms into the index. Note that the
second example above combines subterms and multiple terms. It is
possible to run index on a file that already has an index. The old
target anchors and the old index will be removed before being re-
generated.
OPTIONS
The following options are supported:
-t By default, hxindex adds an ID attribute to the element that
contains the occurrence of a term and also inserts an <a>
element inside it with a name attribute equal to the ID.
This is to allow old browsers that ignore ID attributes,
such as Netscape 4, to find the target as well. The -t
option suppresses the <a> element.
-x This option turns on XML syntax conventions: empty elements
will end in /> instead of > as in HTML. -x implies -t.
-i indexdb
hxindex can read an initial index from a file and write the
merged collection of index terms back to that file. This
allows an index to span several documents. The -i option is
used to give the name of the file that contains the index.
-b base This option is useful in combination with -i to give the
base URL reference of the document. By default, hxindex will
store links to occurrences in the indexdb file in the form
#anchor, but when -b is given, the links will look like
base#anchor instead.
-c class[,class[,...]]
Normal index terms are recognized because they have a class
of "index". The -c option adds additional, comma-separated
class names that will be considered aliases for "index".
E.g., -c instance will make sure that <span
class="instance">term</span> is recognized as a term for the
index.
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HXINDEX(1) 5.x HXINDEX(1)
HTML-XML-utils HTML-XML-utils
21 Nov 2008
-n By default, the index consists of links with "#" as the
anchor text. Option -n causes the link text to consist of
the section numbers of the sections in which the terms
occur, falling back to "#" only if no section number could
be found. Section numbers are found by looking for the
nearest preceding start tag with a class of "secno" or "no-
num". In the case of "secno", the contents of that element
are taken as the section number. In the case of "no-num" the
section is assumed to have no number and hxindex will print
a "#" instead. These classes are also used by hxnum(1), so
it is useful to run hxindex after hxnum, e.g.,
hxnum myfile.html | hxindex -n >mynewfile.html
-f Remove title attributes that were used for the index as well
as the comments that delimit the inserted index. This avoids
that browsers display these attributes. Note that hxindex
cannot be run again on its own output if this option is
used. (Mnemonic: "freeze" or "final".)
-r Do not ignore trailing punctuation when sorting index terms.
E.g., if two terms are written as
<dfn>foo,</dfn>... <span class=index>foo</span>
hxindex will normally ignore the comma and treat them as the
same term, but with -r, they are treated as different. This
affects trailing commas (,), semicolons (;), colons (:),
exclamations mark (!), question marks (?) and full stops
(.). A final full stop is never ignored if there are two or
more in the term, to protect abbreviations ("B.C.") and
ellipsis ("more..."). This does not affect how the index
term is printed (it is always printed as it appears in the
text), only how it is compared to similar terms. (Mnemonic:
"raw".)
OPERANDS
The following operand is supported:
file-or-URL
The name of an HTML or XML file or the URL of one. If
absent, or if the file is "-", standard input is read
instead.
EXIT STATUS
The following exit values are returned:
0 Successful completion.
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HXINDEX(1) 5.x HXINDEX(1)
HTML-XML-utils HTML-XML-utils
21 Nov 2008
>0 An error occurred in parsing the HTML file.
ENVIRONMENT
The input is assumed to be in UTF-8, but the current locale is used to
determine the sorting order of the index terms. I.e., hxindex looks at
the LANG, LC_ALL and/or LC_COLLATE environment variables. See
locale(1). To use a proxy to retrieve remote files, set the
environment variables http_proxy or ftp_proxy. E.g.,
http_proxy="http://localhost:8080/"
BUGS
Assumes UTF-8 as input. Doesn't expand character entities (apart from
the standard ones: "&", "<", ">" and """). Instead, pipe
the input through hxunent(1) and, if needed, asc2xml(1) to convert it
to UTF-8. Remote files (specified with a URL) are currently only
supported for HTTP. Password-protected files or files that depend on
HTTP "cookies" are not handled. (You can use tools such as curl(1) or
wget(1) to retrieve such files.)
SEE ALSO
asc2xml(1), hxnormalize(1), hxnum(1), hxprune(1), hxtoc(1),
hxunent(1), xml2asc(1), locale(1), UTF-8 (RFC 2279)
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