Trying to create invisible type seperators in a single line of text for table of contents/index

[josefg33829974]

Hi,

I am writing a few rock climbing guides where the text looks like this:

Pot Of Gold  62m  21***

Yet another wonderful option on this exquisite buttress.  Super quality first pitch (sport) with trad 16 second pitch of lesser quality but still well worthwhile. The left arête of the buttress.  1) 32m (21) Up the steep arête that looks like it should be about 5 grades harder! 10 bolts.  Optional small cam or big wires after last bolt.  2) 30m (16) Straight up the arête to natural belay. Move to west side of buttress to rap over Rainbow Serpent (two 33m raps to the ground).  Ingvar Lidman (1 & 2), Josef Goding 2009

Maybe a screenshot will help show it a bit better in the page layout context (see middle right of this spread):

I have formatted the first line (route name, length, grade, stars) with a paragraph style, and can generate a table of contents with the page number and this line of text, which is great, but... the new Moonarie (South Australia) book is going to be around 1500 climbs, so manually separating/formatting the spacing between the route name ("Pot of Gold"), route length (62m), grade (21) and number of stars (***) is going to take FOREVER. I also need to work out a way to grab the area (which is a paragraph style header currently).

I am hoping some clever bugger can help me work out a way to create an invisible comma, or tab so I can more easily format the text into a nice looking table like this:

(this I manually reformatted, but I'm trying to see if there is a better way).

I also need to create an index sorted BY GRADE, then by name. I'm hoping to copy all the text out of the In-Design table, take it into Excel, do a data sort (by grade) then import it back into In-Design and finesse the formatting/spacing there.

Does anyone know if there is a good solution for this? I've been reading up on index markers and hidden characters, but still unclear which one might be the best to use and if they only work for indexes or if they will work in a table of contents.

I hope someone can assist!

Thanks in advance,

Joe

[Peter Spier]

I'm not entirely clear with what is or is not formatting correctly in the TOC, but my first instinct here is that creating the TOC normally, then using Find/Change on that story to add/remove/change alignment of tabs is going to be the easiest method.

[josefg33829974]

Hi Peter,

I'll try explaining another way. This is (a small sample of) how the table of contents comes out of In-Design in it's raw form currently:

19	234 Duck  14m  20* (S)
38	1967  26m18*
32	Aeropress  25m 22*(S)
30	Affagato25m  23* (S)
19	Alcheringa  ??m  15
49	Anthony’s yet another closed project  22m 22**
25	Archies Arête 30m  20**(S)
38	Back in Black  50m  18*(S)
25	Bella’s Crack 35m  17*
16	Bennelong35m 20*
16	Blackfella 35m 18
46	Black Madonna 18m  13
46	Black Power 18m  17
23	Bombay Bullocks  40m  20
44	Bunjil  80m  17*
43	Burnum Burnum  80m  20*
43	Carmina Burana  55m  25**
36	Chinnup  28m18*
36	CLOSED PROJECT  25m 22*ish (S)
36	CLOSED PROJECT  25m 24*(S)
41	CLOSED PROJECT  32m 21**
35	CLOSED PROJECT  43m  25-26**?
19	Crazed Dreams  35m  15
49	Dave Shelton closed project  22m 22**
14	Death Threat 40m  19*
32	Double Shot Espresso  23m  24** (S)
41	Dreamcatcher  48m 21** (S)
38	Dreaming of a white Christmas  40m  21*(S)
25	Dreaming of Reconciliation  39m 22*  (S)
32	Dreaming of Rehabilitation  27m 21
47	Dream Machine 20m  18
14	Dreamscape  35m  21*

And here is how I want the text to be formatted so it can be worked on as a table;

Page:      Climb Name:                Length:           Grade:           Stars:      Sport?

19          234 Duck                         14m               20                    *          Yes

38          1967                                 26m               18                   *          No

32          Aeropress                         25m               22                   *          Yes

(etc)

So my question really is, is there a way to create some kind of hidden tab/separation (index marker?, something that does not have the width of a tab - because some of the columns are quite narrow so won't fit) within a line of type within In-Design that will be recognised so this information can be used as a table or index or some other term that I'm not familiar with?

i.e. raw text is;

Page:      Climb Name:                Length:           Grade:           Stars:      Sport?

19 (tab) 234 Duck  14m  20* (S)

what I want is a break between these terms:

Page:      Climb Name:                Length:           Grade:           Stars:      Sport?

19 (break) 234 Duck       (break) 14m  (break)    20    (break)  *   (break) Yes (I somehow need to make a rule if the (S) is present, then change this text to "Yes").

[Peter Spier]

Looks to me like this can all be done with Find/Change using GREP. One pass over the story to change the tabs, then a second (and this one could be a plain text Find/Change) to convert (S) to Yes.

[Peter Spier]

I've been working on this using the sample text above for the last hour and a half and it isn't quite as simple as I'd hoped, so if we could get some help from one of the GREP magicians (jongware, Obi-Wan, anyone?) it would be great.

There are some inconsistencies in the spacing in the sample, as well as one hyphenated range and a couple of question marks and an added "ish" that complicate things, and waht I've come up with so far is the rather unwieldy expression:

^(\d+)\s(.+?)\s+([\d?]+)(m?)\s*([\d-]+)\s*(\**[ish]*)*\s*([(S)?])*$

which finds all the sample paragraphs, and the change to:

$1\t$2\t$3$4\t$5\t$6\t$7

which looks like it ought to work, but I'm losing the asterisks and the (S from (S) when I ask for the change, and that has me stumped.

[rob day]

Tab positions get saved with a Paragraph Style, so couldn't you use corresponding tabs in your text head and TOC style?

So for the head separate the info with 3 right aligned tabs rather than spaces—positioned something like this for the style Text Head:

And then for the TOC List style reposition the tabs and their alignments as needed:

[Peter Spier]

My take on this is that the body text is already set, but clearly your option is the way to go if feasible.

[josefg33829974]

Thanks Rob, I'll take a look at that.

Just to clarify I'm looking for a way to re-format the existing type with some new separators that will act like tabs, but not have the width (as some of the columns are very narrow).

I'll let you know how I go once I have worked out how to do what you're proposing!

[Srishti Bali]

Hi Josef,

I would like to know if the steps suggested above worked for you, or the issue still persists.

Kindly update the discussion if you need further assistance with it.

Thanks,

Srishti