Change order of appearance in TOC?

[FrameMaker-dk]

I am building a small template meant for FM 2022. I have an issue with the TOC.. The TOC is to show Section titles, Chapter titles and Heading Titles.

The Section Titles reside on a background frame on the Master Pages as can be seen in the illustration here.

My issue is... I would like the Section Title to appear in the TOC BEFORE the Chapter Titles. But is it possible to change the order of appearance?

[frameexpert]

Hi Bjørn, Are those paragraphs in the same text flow?

[FrameMaker-dk]

No. The Section Title resides in its own text box, making it accessiblet to use from the body pages. Thing is - I have decided I want to make a template with a "List of Effective Pages", and in order to make that work, I have added disconnected text frames on the master pages.

[frameexpert · Accepted solution]

You could try using Graphics > Arrange to change the order of the text frames on the master page, but I think FrameMaker always lists the main flow paragraphs first in generated lists.

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

Is the separate text frame the upper-left item on the page? 

[FrameMaker-dk]

No, it's the frame right above the body text flow. I believe Frameexpert is right though. FrameMaker favors the tags in the main flow. I did some experiments and I have not been able to change the sort order.

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

I meant the "physical" edges of the frame. I believe the frames are read left-to-right, top-to-bottom. So it if hits the main body frame first, it will be out of order. Not sure about separate text flows however.

Another low-tech solution I was thinking of was to repeat the section title in 2pt white type in the positon where you want it to appear in the flow. Then switch the TOC to look for that tag rather than the one at the top.

[Bob_Niland]

If the document is small and stable enough, converting the TOC from generated to manually maintained Xrefs would be a solution.

To stay generated, perhaps create a new ¶format to use in Flow A, that's hidden (perhaps by ColorViews), and using the Section Variable, or Xref'd to the Section string. Have the TOC generate from that (make sure the TOC lacks the hidden color name/def).

There's a decent chance I don't have the full picture here, because I would not have guessed that lists can generate from MP content (if only because the same MP may be used for multiple body pages).

[FrameMaker-dk]

Thank you. That was ingenious. I did not really think about that solution, but it absolutely an alternative.