FM10 TOC Tab Leaders not showing in generated output

[Guest]

Hi,

I'm evaluating FM10, in the hopes of persuading  the PTB to purchase it. Things are going along swimmingly, but I can't  get the dot tab leaders in my TOC to work properly.

I have my Reference TOC page set up as shown below:

and the Paragraph designer (for example, for the second item in the image) set up like this:

But this is what gets generated:

What am I doing wrong?

Any assistance would be helpful. I'm tearing my hair out over this, and I don't have much to tear!

Thanks,

Andy

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

I think you're missing the tab (\t) between your <$paratext> and <$pagenum> tags. The tab stop needs to be customized to use the dots at the position. Check the wiki at scriptorium.com on "dot leaders" - there's a section on doing exactly what you want to do in their FM8 guide - nothing has changed in FM10 with this.

[peter minneapolis]

Jeff_Coatsworth wrote:

I think you're missing the tab (\t) between your <$paratext> and <$pagenum> tags. The tab stop needs to be customized to use the dots at the position. Check the wiki at scriptorium.com on "dot leaders" - there's a section on doing exactly what you want to do in their FM8 guide - nothing has changed in FM10 with this.

I think this is one of those D'oh issues. The tab character is in the reference page TOC specification prototype paragraph formats. "\t" is one way to specify a tab character, but typing the tab character in the text and turning on Text Symbols, displays the tab like this: ">."

If the screen shots are to the same scale, then the trained observer (aka one who's stumbled over this arcane issue many times) can see that the reference page text frame is wider than the body page text frame, and the tab stop setting - right aligned 6.5" from the left margin - is too far to the right to fit in the narrower body-page text frame, so the tab is not expanded to the tab stop position. The effect is the same as if no \t or > tab was inserted in the prototype.

If you think this is a bug, consider that it's a fixed bug, from the earlier releases, up to around FM7 or 8, when a tab stop set to the right of the text frame's border was expanded up to the border.

HTH

Regards,

Peter Gold

KnowHow ProServices

[Guest]

Um... The text frames on both the Reference and the Body pages are 6.5" wide... I can manually insert a tab in the generated TOC, and it works fine, but I'm not sure that the problem is with the tabs being too far to the right (I tried changing the tab stops in the Paragraph Designer to 5.5"R and it still didn't work).

Or am I not understanding something? I've tried making the text frame wider, the tab stop narrower, entering the tabs manually then re-generating. Nothing seems to help.

Just to be absolutely clear (I hope!), here is a capture of the TOC Reference page showing the ruler:

and here's the body page:

[peter minneapolis]

atz at IDN wrote:

Um... The text frames on both the Reference and the Body pages are 6.5" wide... I can manually insert a tab in the generated TOC, and it works fine, but I'm not sure that the problem is with the tabs being too far to the right (I tried changing the tab stops in the Paragraph Designer to 5.5"R and it still didn't work).

Or am I not understanding something? I've tried making the text frame wider, the tab stop narrower, entering the tabs manually then re-generating. Nothing seems to help.

Just to be absolutely clear (I hope!), here is a capture of the TOC Reference page showing the ruler:

and here's the body page:

Dang! Don't you just hate it when you roll out your secret weapons and they don't do anything?

Something is "eating" the tab characters so they don't survive the generation process. You did all the things I would have done to outsmart whatever that tab-eater is....except inserting a second tab character in the prototype to see if one tab survives.

Oh, BTW, what's between the ">" of the building blocks and the tab character in the prototype? Are they all the same space character - em, en, whatever?

HTH

Regards,

Peter Gold

KnowHow ProServices

[Guest]

Peter,

I just tried putting in the extra Tab character, no dice. I even tried using the "escape" tab, to no avail. The only thing between the building blocks is a plain old space. I tried removing them. No good.

Could this be a real bug?

Thanks,

Andy

[Van Kurtz]

Andy,

This is probably grasping at straws, but make sure the paragraph tags for each line on the reference page are the ones ending in TOC.

Van

[Guest]

Van,

They are. I created H1, H2, H3 (etc.) paragraphs for easier mapping to HTML, and the tags are H1TOC, H2TOC...

Andy

[Van Kurtz]

Andy,

Again, looking for any possible problem....

They are. I created H1, H2, H3 (etc.) paragraphs for easier mapping to HTML, and the tags are H1TOC, H2TOC...

In your original post, the paragraph designer shows the tag as Heading1TOC and with ONE tab stop.

If you did indeed change the tags to H1, H2, H3, instead of Heading1, Heading2, Heading3, check the H1TOC, H2TOC, H3TOC tags to make sure there is one and ONLY ONE right tab at 6.5".

Van

[Guest]

Van,

Um... Yup. In fact, in the captures below, you can see I've set the tab at 6.0", "just in case."

So... I don't think that's it.

This is REALLY frustrating... and I'm waiting for a callback from Adobe support at this point.

Thanks,

Andy

[Guest · Accepted solution]

Hi Andy

A few questions for you that might lead you to a solution:
1. Have you added the tab stops in the TOC formatting in References page after creation of the TOC document or it was created by you in the source document itself? If you have edited the tab stops after creation of the TOC document then I would suggest saving the TOC document in same folder as source document and then recreating the TOC from the source document.
2. Have you tried same steps in another version of Frame or in FM10 on another machine ? Does it work correctly on any of these?

I tried to create TOC similar to the example given by you. These are the steps done by me :
1. Open a source document having paragraphs with paragraph tags Heading1, Heading2 and Heading 3
2. Switch to Reference pages and go to the Table of Contents Specification - edit the specification as given by you.
3. Switch back to Body pages and generate the TOC for paragraph styles Heading1, Heading2 and Heading3
4. TOC document gets generated and opens in Frame with desired content and tab leaders.

Were your steps any different from the above? If yes, what were they?

- Kshipra

[Van Kurtz]

Andy,

Kshipra's post got me thinking.

FACT: your generated TOC does NOT show tabs.

MY EXPERIMENT: I deleted ALL my reference pages from one of my documents and saved the file. THEN I created a TOC, which also creates a bare bones TOC reference page. BOTH the TOC and the its reference page did NOT show tabs. At this point, one typically opens the paragraph designer for each -TOC tag and add the appropriate tab or tabs. Usually best to do this on the reference page and then update all to make sure it also changes the body page. NOTE: IF you are creating a TOC for a single document AND you create a standalone TOC, then the reference page with your updates is ONLY in the standalone TOC file. So, at this point, one needs to copy these new paragraph formats AND the reference page back into the document itself; this ensures that the next generated TOC will have the correct formatting.

SO, if you are sticking with H1, H2, and H1TOC, H2TOC, etc, make sure that ALL the documents in your book have the same reference page and the same set of paragraph formats. If you are using only a single document, make sure the document has the correct reference page and paragraph tags. ALSO make sure the H1TOC tag on the reference page is EXACTLY the same as the H1TOC tag on the body page. Maybe you added the tab to the tag on the BODY page and did not do a global update to get it back on the reference page; however, your screen shots seem to indicate the opposite (now I am getting confused). Maybe when you switched from Heading1,etc, to H1, etc, something did not get updated globally.

TOCs have been working in FrameMaker for a long time that I cannot believe it is a bug in v10. There has to be some little thing that is off.

Van

[Guest]

YES!!!

The Reference page formats in the various chapters were NOT the same as in the generated TOC. I copied the formats into the chapters and re-generated the TOC, and it worked!

That's what comes of not having used FM for about 5 years...

Thanks to all, particularly Kshipra (who got the 10 points on this one) and Van (the runner-up)!

Thanks again,

Andy

[peter minneapolis]

atz at IDN wrote:

YES!!!

The Reference page formats in the various chapters were NOT the same as in the generated TOC. I copied the formats into the chapters and re-generated the TOC, and it worked!

That's what comes of not having used FM for about 5 years...

Thanks to all, particularly Kshipra (who got the 10 points on this one) and Van (the runner-up)!

Thanks again,

Andy

Andy, it also can come from not having had to solve the problem for many years.

Thanks for the memory jogger, all!

HTH

Regards,

Peter

_______________________

Peter Gold

KnowHow ProServices