Issue with Table of Contents Formatting in eBook on Mac's Books App

[craig_n_eggs]

Hello,

I am putting together a ebook and created a table of contents for it.  However, when I open the book in Mac's Books app, the table of contents changes.  It turns blue and the page numbers get pushed over to the chapter headings. I'll attach screenshots below.  Any advice would be appreciated. Thank you.

C

<Title renamed by MOD>

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

First, the general caveat: EPUB is highly dependent on the reader you choose. Hardly any two will render a book the same way. It's best to test/proof your EPUBs in a plain-vanilla, standards-based reader like Thorium or Calibre. Apple's reader is almost good for this, but has some quirks and "enhancements" that either fail to present an EPUB in a completely standard way, OR are aspects you have to address if your market is Apple/iTunes. (One export won't work well for both, and yet a third is needed for Kindle/KDP, of course.)

What you're seeing probably isn't too reader-dependent, though. Some, yes, as TOCs are basically a list of links and each reader handles links in its own way. (Some allow link visual characteristics to be styled; others present blue text with an underline, old browser styles, no matter what you do.)

You don't say if this is a reflowable EPUB or a fixed-page (FXL) one. FXL is... not recommended except for a very narrow range of books, those that are basically "picture pages" like children's books and graphic novels. If the book is basically text, it's preferable/recommended to export it to reflowable.

TOCs also have to be anchored in place — the text frame, of which there can be only one, needs to be anchored to whatever text it's meant to follow (such as a copyright page/notice). If not anchored, all kinds of odd things will happen, usuall the TOC falling to the end of the document. (Any time an EPUB element ends up at the end... it wasn't anchored in place.) Since you didn't mention that, I am assuming you're exporting to FXL. The bad news there is that very little can be done to restyle or override FXL; you get what you get or you start over, more or less. In reflowable, you can apply ID styles as well as CSS styles to help adjust the TOC a little more to your preference  —but not completely, as the reader controls many aspects.

The solution, really, is not to include an in-text/displayed/inline TOC. They are not needed in e-books and are of use only in highly technical books where a detailed TOC can help organize and locate information. For novels, narratives and basic nonfiction... they add nothing but clutter and headaches. Use a well-defined dynamic TOC instead and let the reader manage it. (Define the TOC in the TOC menu, under a specific name like EPUB or EBOOK); then specify that menu in the EPUB export menu.) A dynamic menu is what e-books should use and what most readers (the human kind) rely on.

[craig_n_eggs]

Hello, 
Thank you for the information.  Just to mention, the epub is reflowable and the TOC shows up in the right place, it just looks funny (the page numbers smash with the subchapter titles). The book is a collection of conversations I want my students to access throughout the course.  I'll try out the other readers and continue to try out different fixes.  I wonder if the the right indent or the paragraph allignement might be an issue?

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Okay, that focuses the answer a little. The problem with the page numbers smooshed up against the text is that EPUB (like its basis HTML) does not have tabs, so the tab positioning the page numbers disappears or turns into a space.

The simple solution is to turn off page numbers in the TOC. If this is being exported only to EPUB, you can set all TOC levels to "no page number." If you're switching between a print version and EPUB, create a second, named TOC 'style' and leave page numbers out of that. Besides curing the problem of "no tabs," it removes the fairly useless page numbers as well, since they won't match up in any useful way in the e-book.

[Laura Brady]

The simple answer is that tabs will not preserve in an EPUB export. That's why your page numbers are flush up against the chapter title. That said, I would encourage you to think of an EPUB TOC as a different beast than the print. Does it really need page numbers, for example? As long as it's hyperlinked to the correct location in text, than it's fine. The print page numbers, in this case, might be confusing to the reader. 

The items are blue because they are hyperlinked. That is the default hpyerlink behaviour. You can change that in the CSS but for accessibility reasons, I would encourage you to leave it to the bright blue and underlined default. 

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Some readers absolutely resist any restyling of links, even with low-level CSS modifications. Others will apply restyling and then make the links blue and/or underlined anyway.

I maintain that the correct solution is to omit on-screen TOCs as an archaic appendage in e-books.

[Laura Brady]

My take is that the more ways to navigate in content, the better. And if an inline TOC is the way to do it, then that's cool too. It makes the ebook more usable in general. Loads of people have a hard time seeing and/or triggering the context menus in reading systems that can't be resized. 

That said, the inline TOC does need to be re-thought for digital. If it's the same as print, that show a lack of understanding of the ebook format. 

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

The one place I'll concede the use of an inline TOC is for very complex technical books, where a 2- or 3- level TOC can be extremely useful in "browsing" or hunting for information. But few books with little more than chapter headings in the TOC benefit from the clutter (and ugly-display) aspects when the dynamic TOC, which can be made more layers deep without being cluttered or confusing, is a tap away.

One of my fundamental principles in both design and advising is "respect the medium." I think including simple one-level TOCs in the text is more clinging to tradition, or not truly respecting the medium (its inherent dynamic TOC and seachability, to start with). But I've given up trying to convince one-book novel authors of that, and of trying to shoehorn/hammer in features that are traditional or make sense in print, but are... unnecessary in digital format. I don't think many readers who have learned how to use the dynamic TOC are going to page/jump to page vii to tap a line in a TOC there.

That many readers are hard-coded to present lists and links in the ugliest possible manner is just... an aside. 🙂