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C_Sarelius
C_Sarelius
Known Participant
April 17, 2009
Answered

Confused about TOC layout

  • April 17, 2009
  • 2 replies
  • 4814 views

Hi,

I'm working in FM7 and I've been going through the manual for help on layout of TOC. Specifically what I can't seem to understand is how to group entries in a generated list.

I'm working in a book with a number of files; I'll have a generated TOC, LOF and LOT. In the TOC what I want to do is group entries starting from Section and then Chapter. In other words I want in my TOC:

Section xx

     Chapter xx

          Heading

          Heading

          Heading

     Chapter xx

          Heading

Section xx

     etc

I've also been trying to understand the entries on the Reference page to see if I can figure out the grouping from the way they are displayed on the page.

Question - how do I do it? Do I need to format entries in the Reference page? Or is it somewhere else. (This also applies for my LOF and LOT)

Advice appreciated.

Carl

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer

    Hi Van,

    yes, each chapter is a separate file. The heading 'Section 3 ...' is a paragrpah format 'Section Title'; the heading 'Chapter 1 ...' is a paragraph format 'Chapter Title'; the next level down is a paragraph format 'Main Heading'. All are located on the Body page in a text frame. The TOC is setup to include these three paragraph formats. There is nothing in the header/footers that is used in the generation of the TOC. Here's a screen shot to show my TOC setup. I don't believe that doing an index is the way to go (thanks anyway) because that will only make it harder when I actually have to create a proper index. I'll persevere with examining variables in the TOC reference page and see if that doesn't shed any light - if nothing else this willhave been a learning experience.

    Cheers

    Carl


    Are you putting a Section Title paragraph in each Chapter? If so, that's the problem -- there should only be one Section Title paragraph, in the chapter where the section actually starts. Succeeding chapters that are within that section should not have a Section Title.

    That's where you're mix-and-matching with the concept of "grouping" and the workings of an Index.

    TOCs work by selecting the actual paragraph text for each specified tag -- FM doesn't "roll up" all Section Title paragraphs even if they're the same.

    If you need to have the text of the Section title repeated on each subsequent chapter start, I'd suggest that you make a new paratag, e.g. "Section Repeater", and then not include that tag in your TOC, of course. There are other methods to repeat content, too, such as using variables and markers, but let's not get the thread too confused just yet.

    2 replies

    A
    Anonymous
    April 17, 2009

    To add to Van's excellent summary, FM builds the TOC sequentially, in the order that the specified paragraphs occur in each chapter. However, this order is based on FM's rules for what order it "looks" for the paragraphs. FM looks first at the content that's in Flow A (the main body flow), and after that at content that's in other "structures" of the document such as tables, anchored text frames, other text flows.  So if you're seeing some oddball order in your TOC, double-check how the paragraphs are located in the source documents.

    For example, if you put a Heading1 in a single-cell table in order to achieve some visual effect, then that paragraph's entry in the TOC will be down at the bottom of the chapter's entries, after all of the Heading2 entries that are just entered as normal paragraphs on the page. 

    If this does happen and you can't change the design for some reason, then you might want to consider using a List of Markers instead of a TOC to create the TOC chapter.

    C_Sarelius
    C_SareliusAuthor
    Known Participant
    April 19, 2009

    Hi Sheila,

    thanks for that. It's not that my TOC is showing abnmormal behaviour or strange ordering, it's just that it's not doing what I want it to do. Please see my response to Van's post.

    Cheers

    Carl

    A
    Anonymous
    April 19, 2009

    What are you calling "grouping" -- is it a visual distinction as far as some entries being located physically next to each other? or is it the content of some of the entries that's now that you're expecting?

    could you post two examples, similar to what you did in your first posting, showing what you want and what you're getting? that would help us visualize what's wrong.

    Van Kurtz
    Van Kurtz
    Inspiring
    April 17, 2009

    Carl,

    I presume that each kind of title (Section, Chapter, Heading, etc) has a paragraph format for it. When you first generate the TOC, Frame creates a reference page with an entry for each paragraph format that you include in the TOC, AND it creates a TOC paragraph format for each of these entries, that is, SectionTOC, ChapterTOC, HeadingTOC, etc. You can change these formats however you need for your purposes. It is best to just edit these xxxTOC formats in the paragraph designer, so that you can import them into other documents you create in the future.

    By the way, a TOC is a sequential list. You do not group any of the entries, as one does in an index.

    Good luck,

    Van

    C_Sarelius
    C_SareliusAuthor
    Known Participant
    April 19, 2009

    Hi Van,

    thanks for that. Yes, I do have a separate paragraph format for each level of title, and I've been into the Reference page to change the format for font, indentation, etc. I do understand that a TOC is a sequential list but I thought that if I can get an index to 'group', why not a TOC. I can't be the only FM user to have asked this question or tried to layout a TOC like this, so there must an answer out there somewhere. I'm currently looking at the variables to see if there's something there I've missed.

    I'll post something here if I succeed.

    Cheers

    Carl

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