TopNav index topics out of order

[djohnson]

I am including an index page in my TopNav output.

I have created a separate topic, added the IndexProxy, added the appropriate CSS to display the Index, and styled things to my desire.

The only problem is that the linked topics appear in an order that I don't want and don't seem to have control over.

To make sure it wasn't due to one of the many other things going on in my help system, I created a new project from scratch using the TopNavigation Basic2 template. I updated the CSS and added a few keywords to several topics, adding two or three keywords to some topics and making sure to use all the keywords several times.

Since the Index is primarily designed for print output, and the topic links in print would be page numbers, I presume that the Index is generated in TOC order or something like it.

What I find, though, is that the topic links don't fall in any apparent order. If I regenerate the project, I get the same order. If I delete then re-add the keywords and regenerate, I get the same order. If I change the order of keywords in the topic HTML and regenerate, I get the same order.

The two attachments show the situation.

index.png

index-entries.png

I would expect the order for the "basic" entry to be more like Basic Steps, Procedure 1, Procedure 3, Company Information, FAQs, Tips.
There doesn't seem to be a reason that the topics are listed in this particular order, and there doesn't seem to be a way to change them...which is what I'm hoping someone else has figured out. Or at least can offer a suggestion.

Note that "Sort As" Index Links won't work; they only serve to re-order the index terms (basic, features, etc.). So I could sort "basic" as if it were "zzzyfrzz" and it would appear under "Z" at the bottom of the list, with the same haphazard ordering--and yes, I was desperate enough to try it, sorting "basic" as "basic" and sorting "basic" as "zzzyfrzz."

It only gets worse, because I have some second-level index entries (in my real project) as well.

Any suggestion, however far afield it may be, is welcome (although I probably won't have the chops to do any rebuilding of the index using JavaScript).