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TOC question—Adding leading letters to running heads and TOC

Community Expert ,
May 16, 2017 May 16, 2017

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I am stuck on a student question...

Her client wants to add letters to the running heads to indicate chapter subjects. For example, Chapter 1 might be on Safety, so page numbers should be S–1, S–2, S–3. There is nothing to grab from the page, but easy enough with user variables. Chapter 2 might be on Transportation, so page numbers should be T–1, T–2, T–3.

But then she wants that same numbering in the TOC, and I'm hitting a wall. What am I missing?

~Barb

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correct answers 1 Correct answer

Adobe Employee , May 16, 2017 May 16, 2017

That should work by adding the prefix (like "S-") in the document page numbering options. Or by adding the chapnum building block to the page number variable.

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Adobe Employee ,
May 16, 2017 May 16, 2017

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That should work by adding the prefix (like "S-") in the document page numbering options. Or by adding the chapnum building block to the page number variable.

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Community Expert ,
May 16, 2017 May 16, 2017

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Thanks Stefan for your super-quick reply. It turns out I misunderstood the question—she generates a TOC for each chapter with the letters, so she can just add them to each TOCs reference pages. (Phew!)

At this point, they don't need to be included on the TOC for the entire book. But if they did (because that's still on the table), I'm still missing something—if I change the prefix to S-, I can get the running heads and the TOC to work correctly with the <$chapnum> building block, but then the Chapter 1 changes to Chapter S-!

VMware Fusionss_011.png

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Community Expert ,
May 16, 2017 May 16, 2017

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I'm doing something sort of like this in a current project. A major book section is alphabetic by topic.

  • Anchored to the lead item at each first use of the next letter is an at-insertion-point one-row high Anchored Frame
  • with a Text Frame within it
  • containing run-in ¶ formats, in small point sizes, in a color to be set Invisible at render by Color Views

These ¶s can be picked up by RH/F, TOC, IX, LOx or whatever. It's a kludge, but it works reasonably well, and is more apparent to the document maintainer than, say, RH/F markers.

I further use those same meta text frames for text which acts as hypertext source targets (basically Xref by $MarkerText, something FM has needed for only 20 years or more). Every use of certain terms and phrases in the entire book is an Xref to where the topic is discussed or defined. This can't be done as normal Xrefs due to wanting to have instances of lc, Lcap, Icap, verbose and terse variants of the topic to link to.

The intended workflow is PDF, where I'm not terribly concerned about the metas still being present, and paper. I have no idea how this would render to HTML or eBook formats.

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Community Expert ,
May 16, 2017 May 16, 2017

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Oh, Bob! That's clever! I have to run down to Denver now for my CC user group, but I'll give it a try in the morning, and will report back. Thank you so much.

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Community Expert ,
May 19, 2017 May 19, 2017

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Hi Bob:

Sorry for the delay—we got hit with a major snowstorm yesterday, because when you live 8000' above sea level, Mother Nature doesn't care that it is the end of May.

These ¶s can be picked up by RH/F, TOC, IX, LOx or whatever. It's a kludge, but it works reasonably well, and is more apparent to the document maintainer than, say, RH/F markers.

So I'm close—my continuing disconnect is getting the letter to appear in front of the page number in the TOC.

No.................S–1

More.............S–2

Snow............S–3

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Community Expert ,
May 19, 2017 May 19, 2017

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LOL - sounds like Canada

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Community Expert ,
May 19, 2017 May 19, 2017

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re: ...my continuing disconnect is getting the letter to appear in front of the page number in the TOC.

That might come down to what sorts of objects and expressions are supported on Ref page TOC. I know you can put a letter-dash before the $pagenum tag, but what other objects might be included would require some experimentation,

Work-arounds might also depend on book structure (is each Topic section a separate file?), whether the local TOCs are internal, insets from external or traditional external.

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Community Expert ,
May 20, 2017 May 20, 2017

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Work-arounds might also depend on book structure (is each Topic section a separate file?), whether the local TOCs are internal, insets from external or traditional external.

Thanks, Bob. I sent a note to my student to ask her to come back and clarify her workflow, because I'm not sure exactly how she has set things up.

~Barb

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Community Beginner ,
Jan 31, 2019 Jan 31, 2019

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Hi Barb,

Did you ever find a solution to your query?  I am in the same boat at this time.  I need to have alphanumeric page numbers display in my TOC in FrameMaker 2019 for my four appendices.  I went to the reference page and tried <$paratext><$paranum> but that did not work. I also tried A+-<$paranum> but that just brought over A+-1 for all of my appendices page numbers in the TOC.  What I need is "B-1", C-1" and "D-1".

Thanks!

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Community Expert ,
Jan 31, 2019 Jan 31, 2019

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Hi Edrice:

I just answered your question on your other thread.

I did figure this one out but it's different from yours because the letters are not incrementing from A to B to C. In this case, I defined the chapter number using the text option so that I could customize each one.

Screen Shot 2019-01-31 at 12.28.47 PM.png

~Barb

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Community Beginner ,
Jan 31, 2019 Jan 31, 2019

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Hi Barb,

Thank you from the bottom of my heart!!!  You are amazing!  It definitely fixed my concern and it is working beautifully now!!

Edrice Angry

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Community Expert ,
Jan 31, 2019 Jan 31, 2019

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Terrific! Happy to help, Edrice.

~Barb

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