Numbered & bulleted lists in TOC

[garrettm30]

When a table of contents includes a paragraph style formatted as a numbered or bullet list, the TOC entry includes the number or bullet hard encoded as text. It appears that the 1.8 update took away any ability to not include the number or the bullet.

I request we regain the ability to (optionally) exclude the bullet or number from the TOC entry.

[Wosven]

In the same way, we can add bullet or list to the TOC, but we can't create a character style for them (the new c.style we can create with the "New…" option in the style menu of Bullet & Numbering, will be part of the regular text styles, not the TOC's ones).

[garrettm30]

It looks like GarryP brought up this issue in the questions forum, and there was some discussion there. I think it is a problem that should be addressed. In GarryP's case, it looks like the 1.8 change broke a document that was working fine previously.

 

[GarryP]

I agree with the above. Either the old functionality should be restored or we should get guidance from the team on how we can ‘fix’ existing documents to achieve the formatting that we had before.
As far as I can tell – and I haven’t done exhaustive testing or experimentation – the new way of doing things gives us less flexibility, meaning a less-useful application, which doesn’t seem to be a good idea to me.
However, I would be happy to be proved wrong if someone can show me how the new way of doing things lets us do what we want better than the old way.

[Murfee]

I agree that TOC formatting is not as user friendly in 1.8.3. 

@GarryP, I struggled with this during the Mac Betas, this is a thread that I was struggling with, I needed to keep the TOC numbering exactly the same as the main text headings...long story but it was for a very special and emotional project.

My case was just matching the colour and style of the numbering, I needed to change the formatting of TOC List Number, I based this on my number stye from the main text styles and it worked. The frustration came from trying to find a style in the TOC that was using numbers...there were none, the TOC was automatically pulling them through. I think that if they maintain this then at least the TOC should also pull through the formatting. Users should also be able to decide if they want to use bullets or numbers in a TOC. Sometimes this is needed in the main document but can lead to a cluttered TOC.

 

[garrettm30]

On 4/11/2020 at 3:08 AM, GarryP said:

the new way of doing things gives us less flexibility, meaning a less-useful application

That is the impression that I have. I think it is a fundamental flaw that something that was defined as style (numbering and bullets created as a style attribute) is unoptionally brought over as content in the TOC. Ironically that means that we can't remove the bullets/numbers in TOC (so that it would be different than in the body text), and we can't style those things (so that they could be the same as in the body text). Those are opposite needs, and both of them are broken by this approach.

I suggest either that bringing them over as content be made optional, or not bringing them at all. In the latter case, they could be created on the TOC style the same as they were created in the original style.

[GarryP]

It sounds like this new way of doing TOCs is not popular – from all the posts about it (in various threads) I have not read any that are positive.
It would be nice to hear from the team as to why the change was made and what, if anything, we can do about it.

[garrettm30]

7 hours ago, GarryP said:

It sounds like this new way of doing TOCs is not popular – from all the posts about it (in various threads) I have not read any that are positive.

Maybe, but to be fair, people tend to complain about what doesn't work a lot more than they compliment what does, and especially so here, since this forum is designed for suggestions and bug reports about how Serif can improve the product. So I don't know if we can rightly tell the general feeling of the feature, though I do agree it should be changed.

 

[garrettm30]

I've run into this again, and it is pretty frustrating. 1.8 has broken the ability to have numbering in text but not in the TOC, or conversely, a different kind of numbering in text versus in the TOC. The behavior of 1.7 was more flexible, because you could have numbering or bullets applied independently to either the text or the TOC. It was completely controllable by style.

I am in a dead-end in my current document because of this. I think am going to have to "bake" my TOC in order to work around it. Bottom line is that what is a style attribute should not be carried over as text in the TOC. At minimum it should only be an option.