Affinity Publisher: Comments on the table of contents

[Pyanepsion]

v2.2.0.1931

Hello to the Affinity team and the community,

When I structure a document with a line break between the chapter number and its title, the generated table of contents shows the number and title pasted in, with no intermediate space.

Ideally, not only should a space be inserted to guarantee better legibility, but you should also be able to write out the sequence to be inserted.

In the meantime, a workaround is to add this space just before the line break when creating the title style.

Thank you for your attention to this malfunction and for your ongoing work.

Best regards,

[NathanC]

Hi @Pyanepsion,

I’m not sure I completely follow what the issue is, In 2.1.1 On a brand new document If I create a new paragraph style and then use the standard numbering type, the ‘Text’ content box already has a ‘Current Level’ and ‘Tabtop’ already inserted in, If I wanted to optionally add a line break between my text and number, I could also insert this within the ‘Text’ box at the end like in your example screenshot.

If I then create a TOC using this numbered style as the basis, both the tabstop and line break is present (So long as ‘Remove Line Breaks’ is unticked in the TOC panel) as expected.

Could you perhaps provide a little more detail/screenshots and a sample file which may help better explain what the issue is initially?

Many thanks!

[Pyanepsion]

Hello @NathanC

I'm writing to share with you an example of a table of contents and an accompanying illustrative video. As you'll notice, line breaks are not being converted to spaces.

In this specific instance, we've added a prefix (a number in this case) followed by a line break, all within a style meant for section titles. However, in the table of contents, this added text appears directly adjacent to the section title, without any intervening space. It would be more appropriate if a space were automatically inserted at this juncture.

Moreover, I'd like to propose that users have the option to select the replacement character for converting line breaks, whether it be a particular space or a tab. This would allow for a more polished and professional presentation.

Yours respectfully,

toc-numbering.afpub

[walt.farrell]

15 minutes ago, Pyanepsion said:

In this specific instance, we've added a prefix (a number in this case) followed by a line break, all within a style meant for section titles. However, in the table of contents, this added text appears directly adjacent to the section title, without any intervening space. It would be more appropriate if a space were automatically inserted at this juncture.

In this specific case, you could avoid the problem by adding a space after the number (\#) in the Text Style definition, as I show here:

In general, though, I would agree that when Publisher removes the line-break, it should probably insert a space. Or allow you to specify what should be inserted.

[Pyanepsion]

@walt.farrell

2 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

In this specific case, you could avoid the problem by adding a space after the number (\#) in the Text Style definition, as I show here:

This is what I explained in the first message and what I show in the video.

Note that the problem persists with version 2.2.0.1954.

[Oufti]

3 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

In general, though, I would agree that when Publisher removes the line-break, it should probably insert a space.

This is indeed what happens when you insert manually a line-break in the header (e.g. between two words): line-break WILL BE replaced by a space in the table content, if you tick the ad hoc option. 

But when, as discussed in this topic, a line-break is inserted through the Bullets & numbering paragraph section, line-break is NOT replaced by a space (or whatever) in the TOC. [Edit: The same occurs wether it's with a bullet or a numbered item.]

This is not very coherent… 

 

In other words: if you want to break a header like Hello·world! on two lines and keep a perfect TOC, you should replace the space by a line-break, like this: Hello⏎world! 
—Not adding it: both Hello·⏎world! or  Hello⏎·world! would give two spaces in the TOC: Hello··world!

But if you want to insert a line-break in a header, you have to add in the Bullet & numbering format text field an extra space to the line-break, for the TOC to look correct with a space between number and header text… 

 

Here, both situations – automatic style defined  line-break after the bullet and manual line-break between words – are illustrated.

First with bad results for each situation:

 

And for a correct result, we have to set something like this:

 

(For clarity of the picture, I used a n-space in the text field but result is equivalent with a space.)

— BTW this bug, or incoherence, is not Windows only. I'm on a Mac.

[NathanC]

Hi @Pyanepsion,

Many thanks for following up with the sample file and additional context, I have now replicated the issue and logged it with the developers. 🙂

@Oufti Thanks for taking the time to provide your findings as well!