Wrong order in Table of Contents

[Motljus]

Whenever I have headings separate from the body text fields, Affinity fails to set the order correctly in Table of Contents according to how they appear on the page (top to bottom). There doesn't seem to be any logic to what order it picks and it really looks random. See example.

 

faulty_index_example.afpub

[walt.farrell]

How it appears on the page is not the relevant factor. What's important is the order in the Layers panel. 

As with painting on a canvas, items lower in the stack are assumed to have happened earlier. Thus, within a page, items lower in the layer stack were created first (or are assumed to have been), and will appear earlier in the TOC.

(It's actually a bit more complex, but that should get you started.)

[Motljus]

But other DTP programs follow how the text fields are ordered visually from top to bottom on the page.

And even if I order the layers, the TOC still ignore the layer hierarchy.

 

faulty_index_example.afpub

 

[GarryP]

Hmm…

There’s something strange about that TOC.

The Frame Text containing the word “Index” is above the TOC layer in the layer stack but, even though the TOC has “Include entries before TOC” switched OFF, the word “Index” is still in the TOC. I would not have expected that.

The Indent Levels of the Styles seem to be correct.

Deleting the TOC layer, adding a new text frame, and then inserting a new TOC into it removes the “Index” entry but it doesn’t fix the TOC ordering. The layers seem to be ordered correctly in the layer stacks but the TOC isn’t putting them in the right order.

Making the text flow from the frame text on page 2 to the frame text on page 3 seems to create more of a problem where “Heading 2b” now seems to be 'grouped' with the “Heading 1”s. [Edit: This is actually fine.]

It’s all a bit odd.

I’m not sure what to suggest next.

Edited July 5, 2023 by GarryP
Added clarification.

[Motljus]

43 minutes ago, GarryP said:

Hmm…

There’s something strange about that TOC.

The Frame Text containing the word “Index” is above the TOC layer in the layer stack but, even though the TOC has “Include entries before TOC” switched OFF, the word “Index” is still in the TOC. I would not have expected that.

The Indent Levels of the Styles seem to be correct.

Deleting the TOC layer, adding a new text frame, and then inserting a new TOC into it removes the “Index” entry but it doesn’t fix the TOC ordering. The layers seem to be ordered correctly in the layer stacks but the TOC isn’t putting them in the right order.

Making the text flow from the frame text on page 2 to the frame text on page 3 seems to create more of a problem where “Heading 2b” now seems to be 'grouped' with the “Heading 1”s.

It’s all a bit odd.

I’m not sure what to suggest next.

Yeah, it's just a demonstration file of what I have been experiencing in my real book projects. Just wanted to create a "clean" new file so that no other stuff was affecting the ordering.

[MikeTO]

4 hours ago, GarryP said:

The Frame Text containing the word “Index” is above the TOC layer in the layer stack but, even though the TOC has “Include entries before TOC” switched OFF, the word “Index” is still in the TOC. I would not have expected that.

The Indent Levels of the Styles seem to be correct.

Deleting the TOC layer, adding a new text frame, and then inserting a new TOC into it removes the “Index” entry but it doesn’t fix the TOC ordering. The layers seem to be ordered correctly in the layer stacks but the TOC isn’t putting them in the right order.

Hmm, this is confusing. I think that when considering whether to "Include entries before TOC", Publisher searches the layer stack from top to bottom instead of bottom to top. That should probably be changed. Deleting the TOC layer and adding a new one works around the issue because you're reversing the layer order.

5 hours ago, Motljus said:

But other DTP programs follow how the text fields are ordered visually from top to bottom on the page.

And even if I order the layers, the TOC still ignore the layer hierarchy.

That's correct, some other DTP apps search layers from the top to the bottom. Serif chose to search from bottom to top. There is no right or wrong way, it's just something to be aware of. Here's your document again. I re-ordered your layers to work the way Publisher needs them to be, and also reordered the Index heading layer the opposite way to accommodate what Garry pointed out.

faulty_index_example.afpub