FM 10 TOC Issues! Help!

[Guest]

First, let me preface by saying I am an early-career writer that has taken a position with a company that had no prior tech pubs department or writers (first mistake?). I have had experience with FM 6 and 8, but this was at a larger company with established templates. My current company has no established templates or anyone to create them for me: I am the lone ranger here, and I have not used FM 10 before.

I discovered early on that the "standard" templates that come with FM 10 are garbage. I have managed to create some pretty decent chapter templates (lots of workarounds that I hope don't come back to bite me later on), so I decided to try and create a TOC for the book I created. Using the book TOC template supplied with FM, I have encountered a number of issues. Some of which I'm sure have to do with the fact I have never created templates in FM before.

Issue #1

The auto-generated TOC marks every entry with a bullet and the page number is not separated from the heading with leading periods (..........):

My heading paragraph tags do not have a bulleted autoformat. I also verified that the Heading1TOC, Heading2TOC, and Heading3TOC paragraph tags do not have bulleted autoformats. After doing some research, it seems that the issue must be coming from the reference page (which I didn't know existed until today).

Here is what the reference page currently looks like for the TOC:

Interestingly, HeadingxTOC tags seem to be in the exact form I want, but they do not appear in the body pages that way! I have tried using the paragraph designer to add new tab stops with leaders for each of my entries, but the changes are never applied to the body pages. I can manually change the body pages, but once an Update Book is perfomed, all that formatting is replaced with the crap I'm trying to change. I have tried to manipulate this in so many ways to try and get what I want, but I have not been successful. Can someone please help show me the light?

Issue #2

I'm not sure if this issue has been caused by my paragraph tags that I created, but I noticed that every heading (1, 2, and 3) that appears after a paragraph tag that has some autoformatted text associated with it (Table, Figure, Note, etc.), that autoformatted text appears in the TOC as if it is part of that heading!

Here is an example of what I'm talking about in the TOC:

Here is the corresponding place in the chapter:

This also happens even when there is another body paragraph separating the table from the next heading. Does anyone have any ideas about how to solve this problem?

If there are other FM 10 known issues, tricks, tips, or methods you'd like to share, please feel free to post them!!

Thanks in advance,

Smitty

[Harry28586]

I think you are  not selecting the correct paragraph tags when you add a toc ,only select the one from which you want to create your TOC,like Heading 1 or whatever is required.

[Guest]

Hi Harry,

I double-checked my selections, and I made sure all the chapters in the book contain the same paragraph tags with the same design elements, and I imported all the formats across the book.

Here are the tags I have been selecting:

Do you think the issue might be coming from the reference page?

Thanks for the response.

Smitty

[Bob_Niland]

> Do you think the issue might be coming from the reference page?

That's the usual suspect, and be clear that the RP that matters

is the one named "TOC" in the docnameTOC.fm file.

Both the paranameTOC paragraph formats, and edits on the TOC RP,

control the presentation of the TOC.

[Van Kurtz]

Smitty,

In all probability, you edited the TOC line on the reference page without updating the paragraph tag. Since the line on the reference page is how you want it, put your cursor in that line and in the paragraph designer click update or possilbly update all, to make sure that all your changes are included in the TOC format. You have to do that for each paragraph tag included in your TOC (Chapter Title, Heading1, Heading2, Heading3). Then update the book.

In your original post, you indicated another issue with autonumber formats appearing on the TOC. Look at your TOC reference page. You will see building blocks like <$paranum> and <$paratext>. The <$paranum> building block inserts the paragraph's autonumber into the TOC. If you do not want that, then delete the <$paranum> building block from the reference page.

Van

[Guest]

Thanks for both your comments.

I have the paranameTOC paragraph formats in the reference page and applied the formatting I wanted to them:

But the formatting is still not showing up in the body pages after I save everything and update the book. Is there another place in the RP that I need to modify?

Van - If I don't want the autonumbering from the Note, Table, and Figure paragraph tags to show up in the TOC, what do I change the <$paranum> <$paratext> items to since these are both being used in all four headings in the Reference Page? I can't find any information about what I can type in there...

Here's a question: what would happen if I checked the "Apply Master Pages" option when I update the book?

I have a few customized master pages (especially for the Front and TOC files), so maybe something is being applied to the TOC that should be?

Thanks,

Smitty

[Bob_Niland]

> I have the paranameTOC paragraph formats in the reference page and applied the formatting I wanted to them:

That's not usefully precise.

Assuming your Chapter heads are Heading1, did you:

• apply Heading1, to the Chapter head entry on the refpage TOC
  (that doesn't work), or
• override Heading1TOC on the TOC RefPage to look like Heading1
  (that usually doesn't work), or
• update-all the Paragraph Format of Heading1TOC to look as needed
  (that works)

[Guest]

Hi Error,

Yes, I learned from trial and error (no pun intended) that the first two points you bring up do not work. However, the global update did work after I tweaked the settings a bit.

I think the issue might be coming from the Tab Stops. I'm not sure if this is normal behavior, but in the Paragraph Designer, my current tab stops look like this even though I have the 0.0" R tab stop applied to the selection:

Here is how I configured my customized tab stop:

Anything here look fishy?

Also, am I supposed to have my cursor in a certain place when applying the tab stop in the RP of the TOC? I noticed that there are only tab spaces in the RP:

Smitty

[Bob_Niland]

> Anything here look fishy?

Yes. I set the Right-aligned tab stop to the body column width.

Things that often trip up new TOC-building users, in addition to all the earilier traffic, are:

1. The RefPage TOC doesn't have any tabs in the prototype text by default. You need to insert them between the bulidng blocks.
2. If you set the right-aligned tab positions to even 0.001 inch wider than the column, and in degenerate cases, to what is apparently the exact column width, the tab collapses, and the page number gets no offset at all. Start with 0.01 lower.

[Guest]

Error -

That makes some sense. I fixed the tab positions to be smaller, but do you have a procedure on how to insert the tab stops in between the building blocks? I cannot find an option in the menus or the paragraph designer...I apologize in advance if this is a dumb question and it's right in front of my face.

Smitty

[Bob_Niland]

> ... procedure on how to insert the tab stops in between the building blocks?

Go to Ref Pages, and page TOC.

Place cursor between >I< of building blocks.

Hit Tab key.

Do it for every line.

[Van Kurtz · Accepted solution]

Van - If I don't want the autonumbering from the Note, Table, and Figure paragraph tags to show up in the TOC, what do I change the <$paranum> <$paratext> items to since these are both being used in all four headings in the Reference Page? I can't find any information about what I can type in there...

The <$paranum> building block tells FrameMaker to insert the paragraph's autonumber in the TOC line. The <$paratext> building block says insert the text of the paragraph. SO, if you do not want the autonumber to show, then delete the <$paranum> building block (and any spaces, hyphens, or other characters before the <$paranum> building block) from the each TOC line on the TOC reference page. Then update the book. You can find this information in the Books and Long Documents chapter of the FrameMaker user manual, along with all the other building blocks you can put in the TOC reference page.

Your screen shots seem to indicate that you have a tab at 0.0". I cannot understand why you need a tab stop at the beginning of the paragraph. I would delete it. I believe the only tab stop you need is a right stop at the END of the line, that is, the width of the text column.

Van

[Guest]

Hi Van,

Thank you very much for the explanation. Once I removed those <$paranum> blocks, the autonumbering text was removed once I updated the TOC. The bullets also disappeared, which was probably the most exciting thing. Really appreciate it.

Hi Error,

I removed the existing tabs and reinserted the tabs, but this had no effect on the formatting...I really think it's a Tab Stop issue. It could be the custom page size that I have to use as well (7.5" X 9.0"). I'm going to continue tweaking it. Thanks for all your help! You definitely helped get me on the right path.

Thanks all,

Smitty

[Guest]

Update: I figured out that my Tab Stops were not far enough over to the right. After setting them at 5.5", everything came together beautifully.

Thanks very much, again, for everyone's help!

On to the next challenge...the index.

Smitty