Table of Contents (TOC) question

[J-Philippe]

Greetings, 

I'm getting ready to publish my new memoir (6x9 paperback) and I'm having some trouble with the TOC. 
The way I formatted the opening of each chapter is with a separate paragraph that shows the Chapter number. 
And the next paragraph with the chapter title. Each paragraph has its own style (and format). That's the way I want it to look (as shown on screenshot image "Chapter number and title.jpg")

The problem is that when I generate the TOC if I generate it from both styles, it will list the chapter number and title onto two different lines (screenshot image "TOC - Chapter number and title.jpg"). If I only select the titles, I'll have a single line, but I will be missing the chapter numbers (screenshot image "TOC - Chapter title.jpg").

What I would like to have is this: 

Advance Praise                             iii
Chapter 1: Nothing to Lose        1
Chapter 2: Jacques Cousteau   3
Chapter 3: Tarzan                        5

Other than only using the style for the chapter title to have a single line and manually inserting the chapter number in the TOC before each chapter (which will disappear each time I update the TOC), is there a way to combine two styles (two headings) into a single line so that the automatically generated TOC would should both my chapter number and title onto a single line? 

Thank you so much. 
Kind regards, 
J-Philippe

[walt.farrell]

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums, @J-Philippe.

There is only one way to accomplish your desires, that I know of:

1. Change the layout of your chapter titles on the chapter heading pages. First, use a Line Break between the chapter number and title, not a Paragraph Break. As they are then within the same paragraph, both lines will be covered by the same Paragraph Text Style. Then use a Character Text Style to change the appearance of one of the lines. Finally, after the chapter number, include a ":" that is styled to be invisible. You will thus end up with a chapter heading style (Heading 1) that is overridden by a character text style for the first line and a second character text style to handle the ":".
2. In the TOC, select the option to remove line breaks, and specify the chapter heading style (Heading 1).

Here's an example .afpub file: TOC-Example1.afpub

[vwatson]

This seems like a common need. I just came across this as well and don't see a good/easy solution. I can enter the chapter number with text styling, but can't seem to get any vertical separation from the chapter title as they share the paragraph spacing. Any changes to that spacing moves both the number and title, not the space between them. 

 

[GaryLearnTech]

I've just tested a way that does work for the style of titling illustrated by @J-Philippe: a chapter number and a separate chapter title.  If that's the same for you, @vwatson, read on.

1. Continue to manage your chapter numbers and chapter titles on their own paragraphs/lines with two separate styles.  That will give you your full control over positioning at the start of each chapter.
2. Create your ToC using just the chapter title.  We'll discard the chapter number and automatically recreate it.
3. In the ToC style for your chapter titles, use the Bullets and Numbering attributes to provide new numbering as part of each title's entry.

I used an old text selected more or less at random from Project Gutenberg and did a basic layout.  The attached file illustrates the three steps.  (I'm hoping that you're reasonably familiar with paragraph styles and, in particular, the Bullets and Numbering attributes.)  Look specifically at the ToC style ("TOC 1: Chapter Title") highlighted below.

Once you've got the numbering recreated, the trick is to use the "Text" field to add "Chapter" back in to the auto-numbering.  See the second screenshot.  (NB I also had to add an extra tab stop to that style.  If I had just used a space character between the chapter number and the title, that wouldn't have been required.)

It looks a little convoluted at first, but it's actually really easy.  Hope this helps!

compound ToC.afpub

[vwatson]

I was tracking you until that last step. 😱😅

[GaryLearnTech]

Sorry for not following up sooner, @vwatson - it's been a busy week.  Hopefully you were inspired to experiment with paragraph numbering and are now an expert 😁, but just in case you remained confused, here's a quick video that demonstrates the steps.  There's no audio and it rattles along fairly fast, so you may want to replay bits until you can see how the steps work.  Hope this helps!