TOC, pictures and text

[irama57948095]

I need to create a TOC for an ebook in InDesign but I have Part openers that are images with text on them.

How can I get that text into the TOC without it separating into the image and the text on different pages? I've put the text on there in Photoshop but then it doesn't get picked up by the TOC. Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance.

[manal shanableh]

there is no way, for TOC you have to identify the needed toc cotet as paragraph style, must have a text..  TOC cannot recognize a style from placed psd file.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Manal is correct. No form of export I know of, including EPUB, can read content from placed images, even if the content is live text.

A workaround might be to anchor your part headers to a text line with the TOC info in it, set to a microscopic text size (1pt), color it white, or both. With some tweaking, that text insert will be invisible but will allow you to create a TOC link.

Putting essential text in image form is not a good practice for digital output (EPUB, HTML, etc.) for precisely this reason. You just can't get away with a visual-only layout as you can for print.

[irama57948095]

I did have it all as threaded text in the print file but was trying to find a way to keep the text on the image for the epub hence the photoshop file. I'll try this way and report back. Thanks. 

[Peter Spier]

You can add a NON-Printing text frame to your page and set the correct header text in that. I make those big and red, myself, so they are obvious.

[irama57948095]

I will try this as well. Thanks. I did put it on a layer in a paragraph style that was in the TOC and then locked it and made it invisible but that still separated from the image. All suggestions welcomed. Thanks. 

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

I'm not completely sure this works for EPUB.

In some quick tests, if a layer is tagged non-printing, it will not show up in a dynamic EPUB TOC. If it's made printing, it shows up but the unattached frame falls to the end of the document. I can see how this would work for printed documents, where the TOC can be generated and then the layer hidden, but in all variations of generating the TOC and then hiding the layer, no TOC is included in the EPUB.

I may be missing some workable combination, but it struck me as something I once tested (probably on your mention of the technique) and found it nonworking for EPUB.

Is there a detail I'm missing here?

[irama57948095]

It doesn't work for an epub. I had the same result. I've tried a few things but couldn't find a solution so I posted here. It's nighttime here so will try your other suggestion in the morning. Thanks again. 

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Yeah, I ran three or four variations and the bottom line is that if a layer is nonprinting, it won't show up in the EPUB, even for a previously generated TOC.

The "hidden text" gambit should work although you may have to tweak its style and how you anchor the heading graphic to it. Yeah, it's a bit of a hack. 🙂

[irama57948095]

Unfortunately anchoring the text and making it very small with the paragraph style in the TOC didn't work.  I shall keep trying but will probably have to have the Part header on a page separate from the image. Thanks for all your suggestions.

[James Gifford—NitroPress · Accepted solution]

What didn't work? It's a technique I've used successfully many times.

Create the style for, say, "FALSE PART HEADER." Give it a large bottom spacing value, about page height, so that any following text is pushed off to the next page. (You can also do this by giving the following style a page break setting.)

Make it break to a new page, usually a new right-hand page.

Make it teeny and white, etc.

Quick ETA for clarity: Put whatever text you want to appear in the TOC in this paragraph.

Anchor the actual Part image to this paragraph's BEGINNING and position it as you like, which can include overlapping it to the top page margin. You will want to experiment with Text Wrap and Object Anchoring to get things exactly as you like. Create an Object Style for it once you have the first one defined, and then apply that style to all the other image frames for consistency.

Generate the TOC using the FALSE PART HEADING paragraph.

If that's not working, explain what failure you're seeing.

[irama57948095]

Hi, 

So the part header is in the threaded text. Are you saying to put the image into the same text box because that doesn't seem possible?

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Not exactly. There are several different approaches, but this one is the most straightforward:

Create the actual title/TOC/anchor paragraph as above.

Place the image outside the text frame so that it is unanchored.

Drag the blue square at the upper left of the image box to the START of the anchor paragraph.

Adjust position, text wrap ("None"), anchor options, etc. and create that Object Style from the first example so you can apply it to all the others.

The Part image will just be that — an anchored image with no structural relevance to the layout or content. It will be the anchor paragraph that is used for the TOC entry, even though it's effectively invisible.

[irama57948095]

Even if I make the text invisible it still creates an extra page in the ebook for the text.

[James Gifford—NitroPress · Accepted solution]

What format of EPUB are you exporting to?

You have to have an image anchored for it to show up in the right place in a reflowable EPUB. If you don't anchor it, it will just "fall" to the end of the document. With the right settings, that anchor paragraph should appear at a new page top — but keep in mind that reflowable documents don't really have pages — with the image immediately following it.

If the image is breaking to a new page, you may have it scaled/exported at a size that won't permit it to fit on the same page.

Let me experiment. What is the pixel size of your Part images, what size is it in the document (and what is your margin-to-margin page size), and what settings are you using under Object (CSS Size) and Conversion Settings (Resolution)?

[irama57948095]

That worked. Thank you so much. I had even spoken to Adobe and they couldn't work it out! 

[James Gifford—NitroPress · Accepted solution]

Two tweaks: make the anchor paragraph leading 0, and anchor the image to the END of the anchor paragraph. With that, making the image appear on the same page becomes entirely a matter of the image size in the EPUB reader. If it is full page height, leaving not even that smidge of room for the anchor paragraph, one or the other will break to the next page.

To be safe, I'd keep the Part image at about 2/3 page height, relative to the margin width. That should leave enough slack that all readers keep it on the actual anchor paragraph page.

You will want to experiment with the image sizing options in the Object Export Options menu (right click on the image frame), to override the global option set at export. You should be able to get a full-width, maximum height Part image with one or another setting there... but keep in mind that the result will be reader, and user-settings, dependent.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Just to make this absolutely clear: there is rarely "a solution" for every EPUB layout issue. When you want or need to combine complex or nonstandard elements, as you are doing, it's a matter of "keep trying things until you get the result you want" or at least "a result that's acceptable."

There are just too many variables in InDesign, the way it exports to EPUB, the way EPUB is interpreted by even standardized readers, and then the need to accommodate the many non-standard readers as much as possible.

What you want to do can be done, at least for standard readers OR any one other reader. But there's no simple or single road map to get a doc there.

So keep reporting what does or doesn't work, and we'll get you there. 🙂

[Peter Spier]

If you were asking me, I don't do epub at all, so I defer to your expertise. Works great for print...

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Yes, as noted. I have other tricks when this sort of hidden or meta text is needed, but nonprint layers are great for print TOCs that need to hook into locations with no live text.

But EPUBs are their usual fussy selves, here. 🙂

[Peter Spier]

Don't even need a special layer, just a non-print frame.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Noted. Tested. EPUB still refuses to play.

I suspect that, at a technical level, if it can't find the anchor it won't enable the dynamic link. I wonder what a validator thinks... yep. Missing elements.