AI logo
AI logo

AnsibleIndex Plus

This 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.

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:

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.

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.