ToC, Fast Indexes, OOo and AmiPro

[Jack]

Hello,

I am hoping someone out there uses OpenOffice and
specifically uses the indexing function.

I am hoping there is a macro or some trick to quickly
add index entries for a document. Currently, I am
trying to add an index for a genealogy book, I've
written (still in alpha mode). This book covers about
135 pages at letter size paper and about 600 people.
While the index will build all links to the
individual,that means tagging 600 entries. Not fun. I
know I should have done this as I created it, but it
was created en-mass from a database and then edited. I
originally had this in AmiPro, but I'll discuss that
later. Is there anything to make it faster, or do I
just need to bite the bullet?

Secondly, I'd like to know why OpenOffice doesn't
import AmiPro documents? Just a rant I guess. 

<more ranting>
Has anyone used AMiPro in Linux? I used to use in on
Windows machines and remember it being quite nice.
AmiPro seems like a nice program in Linux, except very
buggy. It moves footnotes around between openings of a
document, loses the formatting on footers and has some
strange default settings on paragraph styles. Not to
mention buggy indentation, and several other bugs I
don't remember. It has not been fun converting a
document from AmiPro to OpenOffice. Also it has no
capability to build a Table of Contents or the
indexing function I'm using in OpenOffice. At least
not one that can update automaticallly.

That is not to say OpenOffice doesn't have issues.
Like changing the next page style on a page changes it
for every page of that type, everywhere in the
document! However once you get over that learning
curve for OpenOffice, it's got a lot of great stuff.

</enough ranting for now>

Lastly, I'm curious if there are any peopel out there
writing books in Linux and what they use? I've heard
of Latex and such things for layout, but not really
sure why you'd want to use them.
They just look confusing as Hell.

Brian JD