Ability to duplicate a TOC

[garrettm30]

Note: This thread started as a feature request but it became a bug report. The bug is this: when you copy and paste a table of contents, the new pasted TOC is given the same name as the original, and that causes problems. This problem is demonstrated in original video. The original discussion is left unedited below.

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I would like to request the ability to duplicate a table of contents for use elsewhere in the same document. Why? There could be scenarios where a similar type of TOC is used throughout the document. For example, I am working on a book where each chapter is preceded by an outline of that chapter including page numbers. I am using TOC to automatically produce the outline, and setting it up was fairly complex, so the ability to duplicate it would be useful.

In the current version of Publisher (1.8.3), it is possible to copy and paste a TOC, but the process is buggy. I post here in the feature request rather than a bug report because I suspect it never was intended to be able to do it that way.

Whatever the case, I have made a video demonstrating some of the difficulty with copying and pasting a TOC. I actually recorded this 11 times with somewhat varying results each time, so I am still not quite sure how to explain what isn't working, but I suspect the main problem (or perhaps even the source of all the others) is that the name of the TOC is duplicated identically, so that you end up with two of the same name, and it is not clear how fix that problem once it happens. Sometimes I am able to get the duplicated TOC to still work as I want despite the name, and other times the duplicated TOC still shows the content from the original even after updating all TOCs.

I am attaching the sample document used in the video in two ways: the state it was in as I began the video (start.afpub), and secondly the step just before the end of the video (I undid the last step where I deleted a TOC) (end.afpub).

Perhaps this is just a bug that can be patched up, or perhaps something different will need to be done. At the very least, I do suggest removing the possibility to get a document in this state.

 

 

 

Edited April 14, 2020 by garrettm30
Added note about bug report for clarity

[dominik]

13 hours ago, garrettm30 said:

For example, I am working on a book where each chapter is preceded by an outline of that chapter including page numbers.

Hello @garrettm30,

would it perhaps help if you set the scope of the TOC to 'Section' instead of 'Document'? And before that set up sections for each chapter.

d.

[dominik]

4 hours ago, dominik said:

would it perhaps help if you set the scope of the TOC to 'Section' instead of 'Document'? And before that set up sections for each chapter.

Well, out of curiousity I tried this for myself and it seems to work when setting up different TOCs manually. But copying TOCs to duplicate them somehow does not work. And this is the whole point of your post.

d.

[garrettm30]

I think I am starting to get a handle on what is happening, leading me to these two concrete recommendations to improve the existing functionality:

1. Avoid duplicate names upon copy. I now consider this to be a bug. Publisher is smart enough to actually create two separate TOCs upon copy, but the same name appears to cause problems related to the name conflict. When there are two TOCs of the same name, any change made to a TOC from the TOC Studio will be applied to the first TOC with that name, no matter which of the two was selected. For example, if I want to rename one of them, it will always be the first that gets renamed no matter which was checked in the "TOC:" dropdown near the top of the studio.
2. Jump to currently selected TOC in the TOC dropdown when a part or all of a TOC is selected in the text. This is a UX refinement that will cut down on confusion, as clearly I was confused on this point in my video. The current behavior will always have the first TOC checked no matter what TOC was selected in the body text. When no TOC is selected in the text, there is no TOC selected in the studio dropdown. Then when a TOC is selected in the text the dropdown is no longer empty, suggesting to the user that the current TOC has been preselected, when in fact it is just the first in the list.

These two refinements are probably pretty easy to make. As #1 seems to be a genuine bug, a moderator may choose to move this thread to the Publisher Bugs (Mac) forum.

Now with the understanding of what is happening, I think I can work around it to achieve what I need to. I will report back if there are further observations or if I need to make corrections to what I have said.

Thanks @dominik for taking part in trying to work this out.

[garrettm30]

I've had a personal breakthrough discovery, and perhaps this clarification will be helpful to others. I assumed the "TOC Style" in the TOC Studio referred the style set of text styles for each TOC, and that much is true. But what I have discovered is that it actually saves all the TOC configurations below the TOC Style dropdown, including which text styles are included, whether there are page numbers, and separator characters. Now that I understand this, my request as per the title of this thread is essentially available now without using copy/paste.

I simply create one TOC, give it a name and configure it to my heart's content, and then I can create other TOCs and assign them the same TOC style, and they are configured exactly the same. The only things that are not coordinated are the settings above the TOC Style dropdown in the studio. This is great news, and even better than just copy and paste, because if you change the setup of a TOC, all other TOCs with the same TOC style will be matched.

My recommendations in the post above still stand, but I can really work with this. I would also welcome some way to make it more clear what TOC Style really refers to, but I don't have an idea on that at the present.

[garrettm30]

3 hours ago, garrettm30 said:

Jump to currently selected TOC in the TOC dropdown when a part or all of a TOC is selected in the text. […]

Turns out this is the normal behavior of the TOC Studio. Apparently it just does not work with TOCs that were copied and pasted, even after they are renamed. If I delete the pasted TOC and recreate it in the way I discovered above, it works as I had wished.

So in the end this turns out to be just a roundabout bug report about what happens if a user tries to copy and paste a TOC.

[Patrick Connor]

@Jon P

Please can you look to see if this can be treated as a bug report (as @garrettm30 has now privately suggested)

[Jon P]

We have this logged