Table of Contents out of order

[Jaypm55]

I wonder if anyone could tell me what is happening here. The TOC is out of order. The entry on Page 15 for Charles Thomas CRIPPS is meant to be under Chapter 2, yet it keeps putting itself under the Chapter 1 heading. I've deleted all the headings and put them back in, and moved the entry manually, which works, but if I need to do an update of TOC, it puts it right back under Chapter 1 again.
I have 3 TOC Headings set up, Heading 1, Heading 2 and Heading 3.
Many thanks.

[Jaypm55]

And it's happening here too. I have to keep fixing it manually, but that's not ideal. 

[Jaypm55]

These are some clippings showing the Styles in both the pages and the TOC. 

[lacerto]

I wonder if this could be explained by the Z-order of text frames within the Layers panel specific to mentioned pages (15 and 41). The screenshots do not expose the text flow, but are "CHAPTER 2" and "First Generation", and "CHAPTER 5", "A 1907 Diary" separate text frames on pages 15 and 41, but added afterwards and therefore on top of the Layers panel list of layers, above the body text frames on those pages? If they are, try if you can fix this simply by changing the Z-order so that Heading 1 text frames are at the bottom of the list, and Heading 2 text frames following them, so that the body text frames are on top of the list.

[Jaypm55]

1 hour ago, lacerto said:

I wonder if this could be explained by the Z-order of text frames within the Layers panel specific to mentioned pages (15 and 41). The screenshots do not expose the text flow, but are "CHAPTER 2" and "First Generation", and "CHAPTER 5", "A 1907 Diary" separate text frames on pages 15 and 41, but added afterwards and therefore on top of the Layers panel list of layers, above the body text frames on those pages? If they are, try if you can fix this simply by changing the Z-order so that Heading 1 text frames are at the bottom of the list, and Heading 2 text frames following them, so that the body text frames are on top of the list.

Thanks for responding. I had a look at the text frames in the layers and something wasn't right. One of the text boxes was from the previous chapter. I moved it around, but it didn't want to play. In the end, I've deleted all the pages that were coming up incorrect, redid them and now it seems to be working. There must have been something hidden there somewhere but my amateur mind couldn't see what was causing it. Now to do the same with the other one that was not playing. Thanks for your help. 

[walt.farrell]

In general, in the TOC:

1. Items on an earlier page appear earlier in the TOC than items on later pages.
2. For items within a page:

• In a single Text Frame, items earlier in the Frame will appear earlier in the TOC than items later in the Frame.
• Items in a Text Frame that is lower in the Layer stack (Layers panel) appear  earlier in the TOC than items in Frames that are higher in the Layer stack. It is the stack that controls things, not the visual appearance on the page that the reader sees.

I haven't tried to figure out what happens with Pinned items, yet.

 

[lacerto]

5 hours ago, Jaypm55 said:

I had a look at the text frames in the layers and something wasn't right. One of the text boxes was from the previous chapter. I moved it around, but it didn't want to play.

Ok, that is of course a possible cause, as well.

The attached video shows what I had in mind:

 

If the headings and body text are part of the same story (text flow) then these kinds of problems do not occur, but quite often headings are separated as independent text blocks because of their formatting differences, and then the frames might be arranged in the Layers panel so that they match the reading order (rather than reflecting the creation order, where the first created item is at the bottom of the list and the last created at the top).

The kind of order that you experienced could then easily happen, if you have Heading 1 ("CHAPTER 1") and Heading 2 ("First Generation") in the same but a separate story from the body text (in which case Heading 1 is listed before Heading 2 in the TOC no matter if you have split the headings in two text frames and in which order they appear in the Layers panel). But if the layer containing the body text is arranged at the bottom of the Layers panel for that page, Heading 3 would be listed as the first TOC item for that page, and Headings 1 and 2 would be listed only after that.

[Jaypm55]

Thank you @walt.farrelland @lacerto. I believe you have answered my question. I was using 2 columns for the main part of the book, the Chapter and title were in a separate text frame spread across the page. I had Heading 3 within the main text frame and it was this one that kept going to the wrong part of the TOC, which as you've explained was out of order in the layers. I can see what I did now. Thank you both. It gave me grief for most of the day and I will be aware of that in the future. 

[CharlyBrown]

On 6/30/2022 at 12:47 PM, walt.farrell said:

In general, in the TOC:

1. Items on an earlier page appear earlier in the TOC than items on later pages.
2. For items within a page:

• In a single Text Frame, items earlier in the Frame will appear earlier in the TOC than items later in the Frame.
• Items in a Text Frame that is lower in the Layer stack (Layers panel) appear  earlier in the TOC than items in Frames that are higher in the Layer stack. It is the stack that controls things, not the visual appearance on the page that the reader sees.

I haven't tried to figure out what happens with Pinned items, yet.

 

What is the sense, working like this. I especially arranged the Layers as they appear on the page, except when a special group / frame has to be above the other layers to hide the content of the layers below – like pictures and their description. For me this is the natural order, or is my thinking wrong?

[GarryP]

Welcome to the forums @CharlyBrown

Layers are ‘drawn’ in the order from the bottom of the layer stack upwards, so that the layers at the top are ‘overlapping’ those below (if they overlap).

Because of this, the text in the layers near the bottom of the stack will be ‘seen’ by the software before the layers near the top of the stack.

Because of this, the TOC will be populated using the text in the layers from the bottom of the layer stack upwards.

I hope this help to make it a little clearer.

[CharlyBrown]

1 hour ago, GarryP said:

Welcome to the forums @CharlyBrown

Layers are ‘drawn’ in the order from the bottom of the layer stack upwards, so that the layers at the top are ‘overlapping’ those below (if they overlap).

Because of this, the text in the layers near the bottom of the stack will be ‘seen’ by the software before the layers near the top of the stack.

Because of this, the TOC will be populated using the text in the layers from the bottom of the layer stack upwards.

I hope this help to make it a little clearer.

This may be one way to do it in the software, but too simple. What's about [maybe "forgotten"] headers covered by a picture frame? You don't see the header, only the picture, but in the TOC you will see the header. So the software should first create a list with positions of the entries and their visibilities and create then the TOC using the position. And here is the next question: You have more than one column, either independent or dependent. How should the TOC be build? There should be a switch to determine whether (a) the entries of a column are before the entries of the next column, or (b) the entries are looked up according to the vertical position and when there are more than one from left to right (or in some countries from right to left).
A TOC should be independent of the layer structure as many people try to order the layers as they appear on a page - to find everything really fast. And often the "layers" are not real layers, they are more representatives of boxes.

[GarryP]

If you want the developers to make a change to the software then you are welcome to make a change request in the appropriate section of the forums – or, better still, look for an existing request and ‘add your voice’ to that request.

However, be aware that many thousands of people are already used to the software working as-is and any change you request to make the software work differently may ruin their documents without warning, if implemented.

[CharlyBrown]

1 minute ago, GarryP said:

However, be aware that many thousands of people are already used to the software working as-is and any change you request to make the software work differently may ruin their documents without warning, if implemented.

Nobody says, that there should be a switch without warning or choice. As I described, there must be a switch how to handle columns, and in addition there can be a switch old style – new style. I'm sure, in each file there is the information with which version it was filed last time. And using this there should be a clear warning when trying to update the TOC.

[CharlyBrown]

8 minutes ago, GarryP said:

If you want the developers to make a change to the software then you are welcome to make a change request in the appropriate section of the forums – or, better still, look for an existing request and ‘add your voice’ to that request.

Please can you post the link to the "appropriate section of the forums" - thanks a lot

[Old Bruce]

18 minutes ago, CharlyBrown said:

What's about [maybe "forgotten"] headers covered by a picture frame? You don't see the header, only the picture, but in the TOC you will see the header. So the software should first create a list with positions of the entries and their visibilities and create then the TOC using the position.

If I understand this suggestion correctly you want the "invisible" headers left out of the ToC. This ability to have a non-visible Paragraph Style included in the ToC is invaluable to people making ToCs of Illustrations, Tables etc. They include the text they want for the ToC in the "header" and apply a Paragraph Style (called... oh let us say Invisible Header for Tables) which has a fill for the Text of no fill. Place that text frame on or near the Table and generate a ToC for Tables that only looks for Invisible Header for Tables paragraph style.

So I am going to have to say no to that suggestion.

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, CharlyBrown said:

Please can you post the link to the "appropriate section of the forums" - thanks a lot

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/forum/52-feature-requests-suggestions/

You can get an overview list of all the forums at https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php. One way to get there is to click on the Forums link below the Browse tab at the top of most forum pages.

[Gamtak]

AAAUUUWWW.... Do we have to go back to INDESIGN? for proper table of contents?

[walt.farrell]

18 minutes ago, Gamtak said:

AAAUUUWWW.... Do we have to go back to INDESIGN? for proper table of contents?

Depends on what you mean by "proper", I think. Mostly they seem to work fine for me; what problem are you having?

[Gamtak]

Sorry Walt, it was my fault TOC is working okay, (but not on character style tekst?).

[walt.farrell]

5 hours ago, Gamtak said:

Sorry Walt, it was my fault TOC is working okay, (but not on character style tekst?).

Thanks. TOC Entries are paragraphs from your text, and so depend on Paragraph Text Styles.