index-o-matic

This program helps to create an index for a PDF manuscript. It requires a plaintext file of index terms and a PDF manuscript. It creates a plaintext output file (by default it will be named index.txt).

Note that the code is able to perform a case-insensitive search and is able to spot hyphenated occurrences of words.

Dependencies

This project uses Python version 3 and relies on having the pdfgrep package installed and accessible from the command-line.

Configuration

This code includes several constants that need to be adjusted for your manuscript and your environment. These include:

• INDEX_TERMS_FILENAME: is the name of a plaintext file with a list of index terms (one per line)
• OUTPUT_FILENAME: the output filename that will be created containing the index
• MANUSCRIPT_PDF_FILENAME: the filename of the PDF manuscript
• PDFGREP: the full path for pdfgrep
• PAGE_OFFSET: the offset between PDF page numbers and the actual page numbers used in the manuscript
• MAX_INDEX_PAGE: the maximum page number to reference in the index (this can be used to prevent endnotes or an existing index from being indexed)

Disclaimer

This code still requires human eyes - it is unaware of context, but it can provide a quick initial draft of an index.

This program arose from the need to create an index for a book project. It is provided "as is" without any warranty, expressed or implied, about merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. Your mileage may vary.