Alphabetical Index not showing Chapter Info

[jiffle]

I recently decided to revisit a document I wrote on an ancient version of OpenOffice running on Linpus, so downloaded the latest version of OpenOffice (4.1.2) on my Windows 8.1 laptop and loaded up the document. However, when I rebuilt the Alphabetical Index I noticed it wasn't updating correctly - but when I dug out my old Linpus system and opened it with the software on there it was fine. After trying many different options and settings, I'm thinking that I've hit a bug. I hunted around and found https://bz.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=59295 which has a good match in terms of title ("chapter info in alphabetical index") but the detail seems to relate to page numbering. By way of example of my problem, I've attached a small document I created which has two chapters (each based on Heading 1 style which is Level 1), where Chapter Two has two lines; the first line has 'Dog' indexed (Alphabetical index) and the second line has 'Bat' indexed (User-defined index). For both indexes I have created a format that references Chapter Info, and I'd expect OpenOffice to cite the Number of the current chapter and it's Title (where the number would be '2' and the title 'Chapter Two') but instead it's quoting the number as '??' and it's quoting the entire line that I indexed rather than the title of the current chapter (though it correctly reports the word I indexed, ie Dog or Bat, and its page number, ie 1). I'd prefer to continue work on my document using the latest OpenOffice on my newer laptop, but if I can't get this working then I'll have to make do with the older version on my tiny Linpus system. My document is a collection of 400 poems, where each poem is numbered and titled, and my Index is an Index of first lines, which i wanted to show (a) the first line, (b) the poem number, (c) the poem title, (d) the page number but as things stand I can only do (a) and (d). Any help or suggestions would be much appreciated. Thank you.

[Hagar Delest]

Hi and welcome to the forum!

Indeed, it looks like a bug. I've never really used this feature (with the chapter info), so can't say if it used to work in the past for me).

You should create a new bug report and a link to this discussion and to the previous bug that seems related but still different.

[jiffle]

Thanks Hagar, I've raised it as an issue. Meanwhile, if anybody is running an earlier version than 4.1.1 (which Hagar has, based on his signature) or 4.1.2, and you have time, please could you try opening the attachment and updating the alphabetical index to see whether it works correctly as it probably makes sense for me to uninstall my current version and install an older one if there is one that works (but my Linpus one was version 1 or 2 which is really ancient). Thanks.

[RoryOF]

I think you may be able to do this using a customised Table of Contents, which you set to use Index marks. You may have to change your existing User Index Marks to ToC index marks.

[jiffle]

Hi RoryOF. Ok thanks i'll take a look. My attached file was based on a conventional alphabetical index, and a user-defined one (in case that made any difference), and the document where i first encountered the problem worked as i expected when i tried it on my ancient version of Open Office but not on 4.1.2 implying there is some kind of difference there, but whereas up until now i've focused my attention on styles and levels to find a fix or workaround i'll take a look at ToC features (my original document did have a ToC, which updated fine on 4.1.2, and also referenced Chapter Information (current chapter number) in headers and footers, which from memory worked ok too, hence i was generally confident that my chapter headings and numberings were being recognised as such). I had a straight ToC, then a copy of the ToC that i re-sorted so that it was ordered by poem title rather poem number, then the Index of first lines which is the bit i can't get working in 4.1.2.

[Hagar Delest]

In fact I run 4.1.2. My signature was not up to date. This has been fixed.
You should post here the link to the bug report so that users interested can vote for it.

[RoryOF]

If you edit your Alphabetic index and on the Entries tab select the Chapter Info tab; a new dropdown called Chapter Entry will open below the Character Style dropdown., This new dropdown will allow one select "number range only", Description only" or "Number range and description". Play with that - but I still think the Chapter Info selection is not what it should be. Just what is selectable on that screen at any time varies according to whether one has the cursor in a blank space or not.

[jiffle]

Hi Hagar. The link to the bug report is: https://bz.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=126766

Hi Rory. Yes, that's the feature I use. In the past, besides just reporting the page number on which an index entry appears, the Chapter Info allowed you to report the chapter number (if one was assigneed) and the chapter-heading text. I have a collection of over 400 poems on something like 200 pages, and I carefully indexed all the first lines. The alphabetic index then gave the first line of each poem, the poem's number and title (ie chapter number and 'description') followed by the page number. In fact, I set my headers and footers to report the current poem number as well as the page number (and that feature still seems to work). I thought it was a brilliant feature and invested much effort into using it on my ancient copy of OpenOffice, so I'm pretty disappointed it's broken on the latest version.