Within the DITA community, there is an ongoing exploration of emerging indexing standards and methodologies. These are designed to further enhance indexing practices. While not yet widely adopted, they are under consideration:

Microindexing: A concept where smaller, more granular index entries are used to provide hyper-specific access to content. This might involve indexing at the paragraph or even sentence level.

Interactive Indexing: The idea of interactive indexes where users can provide feedback and fine-tune index entries. This collaborative approach aims to improve the relevance of the index.

Visual Indexing: Experimentation with visual elements in indexing, such as heatmaps that show where users are clicking, or graphical representations of index terms.

Industry-Specific Standards: Considerations for industry-specific DITA indexing standards that cater to unique needs, such as medical or legal indexing standards.

Example:

In a forward-thinking DITA project, you are exploring the concept of microindexing to provide users with extremely precise access to content. Users can interact with the index, suggesting changes or improvements. Visual indexing elements, like heatmaps, are used to understand user behavior. The project is considering industry-specific standards for medical documentation to ensure indexing meets the stringent requirements of the medical field.

<!– Example of emerging indexing standards in DITA –>

<index>
  <title>Emerging Indexing Trends</title>
  <indexterm>
    <primary>Microindexing</primary>
  </indexterm>
  <indexterm>
    <primary>Interactive Indexing</primary>
  </indexterm>
  <indexterm>
    <primary>Visual Indexing</primary>
  </indexterm>
  <indexterm>
    <primary>Industry-Specific Standards</primary>
  </indexterm>
</index>

In this example, the DITA project is exploring innovative indexing standards and methodologies to improve the indexing experience.