Updated: 13th July 2020.

Want to home-brew a classic “back of the book” index from a Word file, ideally using freeware? Here are all the current software options I could find:

* TExtract can handle a wide variety of input files and seems to be favoured by pro book indexers. From $79 (use for a single title) to $595 (buy outright). Seems likely to take a while to learn.

* WordEmbed. £80. A MS Word Macro that helps to automate the process where your pre-made book index gets slotted in as an intrinsic ‘living/linked’ part of the MS Word document. It seems to be well regarded as a helping hand, but is not an automated maker of the index in the first place. Not likely to be used by amateurs but it might be something you could tell your hired low-cost ebook freelancer about — they might be interested in learning how to use it and thus adding to their skills-base.

* PDF Index Generator. $69.95, with a free demo limited to the first ten pages of the book. Create a basic automatic index, and then trim back and supplement it as needed.

Version 2.4 added a new feature, a… “new query template has been added to allow indexing capitalized phrases” which works this way: get to “Step 2” in the initial PDF import | “Include words” | Click on pencil icon | “Add Query” | Choose “Capitalised Phrases” from the dropdown | this then forms Query 1 | Make sure Query 1 is ticked, and “Index these words only” | OK.

You now have a vastly more useful starting point for a first-pass at an index than otherwise, with all your place-names and personal names done…

There’s also a filter to get the “surnames, forenames” switched over. You can stack filters and/or run multiple indexes and then merge them (video tutorial link: see video at the 3 minute mark) and thus work in stages.

You’d then un-tick the irrelevancies and cut out the mis-steps, and then go through your book manually and add to the index various concepts and ideas which readers might want to look up. That wouldn’t be the end of making a polished index, but it’d be a big chunk of the grunt-work done.

A note on Java:

However, useful as such automation is, note that PDF Index Generator requires that you install Java to run it, and having Java installed on your PC these days is a very very major and ongoing security risk…

Network World reported that in 2014 U.S. Homeland Security… “recommended users uninstall Java completely” throughout the USA. In 2014 PC Magazine advised “Users should either uninstall Java, disable it entirely in the browser, or take other steps to protect themselves from attacks against Java.” In 2015 InfoWorld magazine wrote… in 2015, it’s really, really tempting [for a network admin] to simply uninstall Java from user machines.” In 2017 even Java World wrote, of yet more new and critical vulnerabilities, that… “Users should uninstall Java from their systems”.

Still… one might safety install Java on an old laptop and run from there, if the laptop has sufficient memory, where it would be quarantined from your main PC. Or, for a one-time use on your main PC, you might: i) download the standalone Java installers, ii) disconnect from the Internet; iii) install Java and then PDF Index Generator; iv) do your indexing output and refining work; v) completely uninstall Java and then re-connect to the Internet. Only with the standalone (full, about 58Mb) Java installer and the Internet disconnected does the installer NOT collect and send your system fingerprint to a remote location at Oracle, makers of Java. After install you should also look down the Java Security settings and disable things like Web browser integration (most Web browser makers block all Java plugins by default, but it’s best to check).

Update, July 2020: As of PDF Index Generator 2.9…

The Windows edition of the program now comes with Java embedded inside it, so you don’t have to worry about installing the right Java edition to run the program.

* Index Generator is un-crippled freeware for PDFs. It’s more basic than PDF Index Generator (above), lacking things like Phrase Query filters, but is quite capable and easy to use. I found that it doesn’t require an install of Java to launch or work. It’s available for Windows, Mac and Linux (the latter two do seem to require Java?). The very major drawback is that it currently appears to lack any Query ability to select only capitalised items such as Names and Place Names, and seems to actually case-shift every word in its pick-list to lower-case! Still, it’s in active development, and we may well see it catching up with PDF Index Generator over time.

* For a simple table of: word | language | times used the free Calibre ebook management and conversion software can also give you a quick output from an ebook of all words in the book. Calibre’s simple word table can then be exported to .csv and thus sorted in MS Excel. To access it from inside Calibre: load your ebook and convert to ePub (it only works with the ePub format) | click the tiny top-right “more” arrows | drop down the extra hidden toolbar | Edit Book | Tools | Reports | Words | Save…

The Word file’s word capitalisation is retained in the resulting Calibre list. On loading into Excel and sorting for capitalised words, one may thus quickly create a rough checklist of important name items, for reference use when selecting words with the likes of Index Generator (which regrettably appears to have no such ‘show capitalised name words only’ function).

* Indiscripts’ IndexMatic 2 plugin for Adobe InDesign (which is Adobe’s flagship DTP software).

Possibly someone will eventually whip up a script to automatically check if a word or phrase in an index has a corresponding Wikipedia or Infogalactic page, thus offering another way to filter a word-list down to the more important items.

How to get a free and approximate audio transcription via YouTube’s automated transcription:

Update: this tutorial may no longer be needed: YouTube now provides a ‘Closed Captions’ panel which allows you to turn off the time-coding, and then copy-paste the text.

1. Use the free Audacity or other desktop audio software to split your .mp3 into segments of less than 15 minutes each. I assume that’s still the limit. Or make it whatever time-limit YouTube sets on uploads in future.

2. Upload the .mp3s to YouTube as a “Public” video via TunesToTube. This is a free service that lets you upload an .mp3 to YouTube and quickly add a single picture visual, to become a video which is then uploaded to YouTube. No longer works. Try Audioship. MP3 to video will also get you a MP3 to MP4 file that can be uploaded to YouTube. Neither are perfect for those with slow uplinks.

Solid desktop software such as Slideshow Studio HD can also quickly create a simple YouTube friendly video, without you having to load a huge lumbering video editor such as Adobe Premiere Elements. If then uploading the .mp4 manually, ensure you tell YouTube that the video is in English, as otherwise it may later get confused and try to use Spanish etc for the captioning. Google also has a 15 minute upload limit, and may still have this in some nations.

3. Once uploaded, then go to YouTube and find your Channel, click the Settings cog on the uploaded video, and turn on “Automatic Subtitling”. If it won’t let you do this, you may need to go into the Dashboard and find the Subtitles tab.

4. Wait a minute or so for the subtitles to be made. Then go to DownSub.com to download and save the video’s subtitles as an .srt standard subtitles file. The Dashboard in YouTube may also let you download a subtitles file without needing this third-party service.

5. Get the Open Source Subtitle Edit 3.5 desktop software. Load the .srt file. In Subtitle Edit: File -> Export -> Plain Text.

6. Load the resulting text into Word, and edit and correct. It’s accurate enough for a ‘speech radio’ type podcast, though without much punctuation and you’ll need to work on it to polish it up.

You can of course get willing hands around the Web to transcribe, but you have to pay them (it’s surprisingly affordable, try Fiverr) and there’s usually at least a 12 hour turnaround time. The above method would help you to meet a much tighter deadline.

Just a note on the popular third-party Facebook filter F.B. Purity. Changes are obviously afoot in how their blocklist blocks items from appearing in your personal Facebook feed. I’ve noticed a number of changes so far, and possibly there are more…

1) Under the “Photo Stories” settings, the option to block “Meme” stories is now much more sensitive that it was. It is blocking all sorts of legitimate items. Possibly it was boosted to help people cope with the U.S. elections?

2) “Selfie” blocking is now blocking things like Christmas event posters, that just happen to have a small face somewhere on them.

3) If you were also correctly blocking all stories from a news site such as Russia Today (aka RT, Putin’s public propaganda arm), in your personal Text Filter blacklist, using a backslash thus…

rt\.com

Then note that this now also blocks all shares from any other URL ending in *rt.com

4) F.B. Purity’s word blocking in the Text Filter also auto-expands on the root word, something I don’t remember seeing happen before. For instance, if you block “stories” then you also block all posts using “histories” and blocking “ISIS” blocks all posts with “crisis”.

The free 9xbuddy is very useful and has been fast and reliable for me for several years now. Paste in the URL of almost any streaming media that doesn’t offer an .MP3 download. 9xbuddy then ferrets among the HTML and javascript in search of the actual audio file, then gives you a simple link to download it. It’s actively maintained and supports a huge range of streaming services. Also works for video, which is useful for lecturers who want to show pre-loaded video clips and thus bypass the usual wi-fi connection hassles.

Here’s a handy little web-whittle. It lets you save large versions of images from fleeting eBay sales listings, in which images are usually blocked by a javascript lightbox. You don’t need an add-on to save them to your PC.

In Firefox, just go: View | Page Style | No Style. This strips all formatting off the page.

Then scroll down to the bottom of what is now a much longer page than before, and near the bottom you’ll see the 1600px size pictures. You can the right-click on the picture and save.

Blocked:

Unblocked:

Problem: You’ve been sent a .pages format document. No, I’d never heard of it either. Apparently it’s a sort of obscure equivalent of the old Windows .wps format, only it’s from word-processing software that ships with Macs. Like the old .wps format used to be, nothing on earth will open it as intended — except its own native production software.

Solution 1: (defunct) It seems there used to be a Windows trick where you’d rename the .pages file as a .zip and there would be a preview.pdf inside that which was usable. That trick doesn’t appear to work any more, at least with the newer versions of whatever Mac software makes .pages files. You may, however, at least get a .JPG image that can show you how the document was meant to look.

Solution 2: (working)

1. Get the free LibreOffice, a version of the popular Open Office suite. The developers of LibreOffice are not afraid to incur the wrath of Apple by enabling .pages import. Install. (LibreOffice has a notoriously long install time, and if you need it a bit quicker then try the portable version).

2. Open a new blank document in the Writer component of Libre Office.

3. Go: top menu bar | Insert | Document and insert your .pages file. Your document loads and appears, but looks like blank pages with a few lines of dots at the top of each page. The formatting has all been lost, but the dots are actually all the words scrunched up together.

4. Go: top menu bar | Edit | Select All | Copy.

5. Open MS Word or similar. Paste in what you just copied to the clipboard. As you’ll see, you’ve lost any fancy formatting there may have been in the .pages file, but at least you’ve got all the plain text and it’s in the right order, it flows and is editable.

Update: Insert | Document is no longer available in the current 2021 version of Writer. Seems to have been removed, presumably at the behest of Apple. Older versions of LibreOffice, inc. summer 2016, are here. Regrettably LibreOffice forces you to uninstall a new version, to install the older version.

Update 2021: There are now several online converters. The only one that worked for me was Zamzar set to convert .pages to a .txt file.

Good news, for those who use GoogleMonkeyR to present their Google Search results in a widescreen + columns format. It’s been swiftly fixed.

Changes at Google broke the script a couple of days ago, when Google’s layout changed the div.col value to “0”. The script continued to work fine with DuckDuckGo and sort-of worked with Google News.

‘Topogiz’ has now kindly posted a working hotfix on GreasyForum, the Greasemonkey forum. It requires a simple manual edit of the script. I’ve edited this and expanded his instructions here, so that it’s friendlier for the average user…

1. In the top menu of Firefox, go: Tools | Add-ons | User-scripts. Then select: GoogleMonkeyR | Options.

2. An Options window will then pop up. At the foot of this window is the option to “Edit This User Script”.

3. Assuming that you have the current version of GoogleMonkeyR, go to Line 681. Or find…

if(this.numColumns>1)

4. Just below Line 681 there is a line which starts with…

style += ("#cnt.singleton

Find this, then just below it insert a new blank line, and into that new line add…

style += ("div.col {width: 100% !important;}");

It should now look like this…

5. Up at the top of the panel, click on “Save”, and exit.

The fixed script will also continue to work fine with DuckDuckGo and Google News.