Powerful Index Cross-Link Capabilities
Of course, when I felt my index was finally completed, I generated a CHM file and tested every link, for each one asking myself: is this what I would expect to see as a reader? In some cases, the answer was "no", so I made the indicated changes. Here is yet another clever feature that I didn't suspect was available, until I encountered it just now. In my index I had
firmware
updating
Double-clicking on "firmware" was fine: it had all the links where firmware is mentioned in my help file. Then double-licking on "updating" I expected would be a narrower list, and it wasn't. Looking at the list, I decided which items on the list should be removed (topics that were linked to that keyword).
Here, the powerful "Keyword references" dialog box, accessible via the Keywords toolbar, provides a compact display of the pages that a keyword is linked to. Not only can you uncheck links you don't want to exist any more, but the dialog box additionally provides the entire TOC tree structure, so that if you need to move links or add new ones, it is as easy as expanding the TOC tree to the pages you want to link to, and checking the new pages you want the keyword to be linked to. It is difficult to imagine an easier or more productive method of doing this task, which can be tedious and error prone in other software applications.
For my particular situation, I only needed to remove a few links from the "firmware" > "updating" keyword. Below you can see before and after screenshots showing how easy this was.
Keyword References Dialog Box Before Removing Unwanted Links
The three topics I wanted to unlink from that keyword were the lower three. All I had to do was uncheck them.
Keyword References Dialog Box After Removing Unwanted Links
Not only that, but while building your index, as your index matures, you will inevitably think of keywords that should be added to the index, that you already know will need to be linked to several pages of your document. This dialog box makes this as easy as adding the keyword to the keywords list, and then opening this dialog box while focus is on that keyword, and simply checking all the pages that keyword should link to.
Realizing that a new index entry is needed that I already know will need to link to several pages is something I encounter regularly while building a thorough index. This dialog box makes handling that situation take only a few seconds from start to finish. In my opinion, this is one of the more powerful productivity boosters inside Dr.Explain.
