AnsibleIndex PlusThis software is no longer being sold, developed or supported. Since occasional enquiries continue, we have made AnsibleIndex and its companion programs AnsibleCheck and Grease available for free download, with the full manual on line as a PDF document.
- AnsibleIndex manual (PDF)
- Free download: AnsibleIndex Plus software in Zip file: LocoScript 1 or 2
- Free download: AnsibleIndex Plus software in Zip file: LocoScript 3 or 4
Terms of use: the download is free but Ansible Information retains copyright. The AnsibleIndex, AnsibleCheck and Grease software may not be resold commercially nor included in public domain/shareware compilations – though you are welcome to link to this page. No support is available. If you find these programs useful, a donation is always welcome: send to Ansible, 94 London Road, Reading, RG1 5AU, or use PayPal here.
An accurate index adds professional quality to written work, whether it's an academic thesis, research papers, an article ... or even a full-length book. AnsibleIndex Plus is a reliable indexing program, simultaneously simple to use and very powerful, and it works with ordinary LocoScript documents. It indexes by extraction. You start with your document in LocoScript, using normal LocoScript commands to identify the words and phrases you wish to index. (No special procedures to learn! LocoScript 'reverse video' marks are normally used, but you can set the program to use a variety of others.) AnsibleIndex Plus does the rest: it sorts your subjects into alphabetical order and lists the page numbers on which they appear. (If you want to make changes later, you can.) The program will index all documents, long or short, even a series of them kept on different disks. The index of a full-length book is easily within its scope. Here are the main features:
- Text may be indexed as WORDS, PHRASES or INVERTED PHRASES. E.g., 'Duke of York' can be optionally indexed as York alone, as Duke of York or as York, Duke of. THEMES and MASTER THEMES can be indexed, with several themes running concurrently. SUB-HEADINGS to main items are possible ... and main items can be CROSS-REFERENCED to sub-headings.
- Alphabetization is automatic. You can choose to sort by letter [cat, catamaran, cat food] or by word [cat, cat food, catamaran]. Foreign characters can be alphabetized as you decide.
- Page numbers are exact, and listed in numerical order. If the same text appears on adjacent pages, the numbers are amalgamated. E.g., if they appear on pages 14, 15, 16 and 17 they will be shown as: 14-17.
- It is possible to create a 'dummy' index for typesetting, with the page numbers omitted, or replaced by two zeroes (the real numbers are held in memory): single entries appear as 00, adjacent entries as 00-00.
- AnsibleIndex Plus may be used with existing documents as well as new ones. You can mark text that is complete, or you can mark as you go along. You can create an index at any time to see how it looks so far.
- You can make numerous changes to the layout of the index, guided by options shown on the screen. The index may be printed for reference, or loaded into LocoScript for fine editing.
- The index may be reorganized to match the pagination of a book after it has been typeset.
- There are special facilities for sorting lists (of books, records, names collected for family histories, etc) without having to mark each and every entry by hand. The LocoScript 3 version of AnsibleIndex Plus has a particularly easy option for sorting every line of a document ... in this special case, no marking of the text need be done at all.
- If you move to an IBM-PC computer system, the upgrade from LocoScript to PC LocoScript Pro is easy and seamless ... and likewise our upgrade path to AnsibleIndex Pro, a single powerful program which combines all the functions of AnsibleIndex and (described below) AnsibleCheck, Grease, AnsibleMerge – plus a brand-new Concordance option.
- Above all, AnsibleIndex Plus is genuinely easy to use. Everything is guided by clear menus, and made as foolproof as humanly possible. Even so, it comes with a detailed manual written in plain English. We have been supplying AnsibleIndex for several years, and each release has incorporated dozens of suggestions from our customers.
If you buy AnsibleIndex Plus, the disk we send you includes ALL the programs on the AnsibleCheck disk, described in the next section. This INCLUDES AnsibleCheck and Grease. There is no need to order both disks.
AnsibleCheck
(included with AnsibleIndex)LocoScript 1 gives you no way of counting the number of words in a document. LocoScript 2 with LocoSpell, will count words for you ... but only at the end of a long-winded spelling check. Only LocoScript 3 and 4 provide a straightforward word count – but we offer wonders and marvels not even found in LocoScript.
AnsibleCheck is a word counting utility, designed for use with any LocoScript text document. It does not make estimates: it reads each word as a word, and is therefore extremely accurate. No special preparation is required. You do not have to convert your document to "ASCII format", and you don't have to move it to another Group on the disk. (We mention this because some Loco-Script accessory software does require much fiddling around before it will work properly.) With AnsibleCheck you simply enter the name, or pick it out from a list, and the program does the rest.
- You can count the words in a single document, or in a whole series of documents, even if they are on different disks. (Word-counts will be amalgamated, if you choose.) In addition, you can choose to count just a part of a document ... e.g., the number of new words written today.
- You can optionally make AnsibleCheck read your text and find repetitions of words ... accidental or otherwise. The program shows any repetitions in context, highlights them in reverse video, and adds a note of their exact location in the text.
- And one extra. We wrote Grease for fun, intending to entertain you, infuriate you, inform you ... or even reassure you. Oddly enough, this vocabulary-analysing program generates almost as much correspondence as its more serious companion.
AnsibleCheck is extremely quick and simple to use, and is run from a menu. It comes with a detailed manual which will reassure even the most timid. Once you've used the program a couple of times, you won't need prompting!
Grease
(included with AnsibleIndex and AnsibleCheck)The infamous Ansible Information vocabulary analysing program. David Lodge's comic novel Small World inspired this with its scene in which a novelist is confronted with a computer analysis of everything he's ever written. This dismayingly reveals that his favourite word (after screening out "the" and "and" and other common nuts and bolts of speech) is "grease". Grease carries out a similar examination of LocoScript documents, with results that users have variously found alarming, reassuring, or instructive.
For PC users we now offer a "universal" Windows 95/98/NT version of Grease. You need to save your document in plain "ANSI" text format or copy it to the Windows Clipboard, though.
AnsibleMerge
(not included with AnsibleIndex or AnsibleCheck)AnsibleMerge is a supplementary program for heavyweight users of AnsibleIndex. (Most people will never need it – so we offer it as an optional extra only.) If you are producing an unusually large index with over 7,500 entries, beyond the capacity of AnsibleIndex to handle in a single chunk, you can instead index it in two sections – or three, or four, or one for each chapter of your book, as you prefer – and use AnsibleMerge to combine the resulting sub-indexes into a single alphabetic sequence. The only limit to its handling capacity is your hard disk space.