[Affinity publisher V1] TOC and text styles

[Hexara]

Hello everyone,

When I create a TOC (Table of contents) based on some text styles I created, it's generated like that:

Heading 1

Sub-heading 1

Heading 2

Sub-heading 1

 

I want it to be like that:

Heading 1

-- Sub-heading 1

Heading 2

-- Sub-heading 1

 

Idk how to explain this, I wanted to adjust different indentation of TOC levels

[Old Bruce]

Use a different Paragraph Style spacing for the Heading  and sub-heading. Note that I changed the font for the TOC 1: Book Name in one but not the other screen shot.

 

 

[Hexara]

@Old BruceThank you!

Another question, how does the app understand my layout? How it knows that text style is a child or sub-category of the other?

For example, testing this on Heading 1, 2, 3... X works fine, what if I wanted to make "Sub-heading" as a child of "Heading"?

[Old Bruce]

3 minutes ago, Hexara said:

Another question, how does the app understand my layout? How it knows that text style is a child or sub-category of the other?

Pretty sure it doesn't understand anything.

Most common screw up / mistake / confusing thing in the ToC is that the layer position is important, not the place on the page.

Look at your layers panel and move three different text frames up or down. Regenerate the ToC after each move. Note that the different text layers will move in the ToC.

Bottom is the first layer for the ToC ordering, top is the last layer for ToC ordering.

[MikeTO]

3 hours ago, Hexara said:

For example, testing this on Heading 1, 2, 3... X works fine, what if I wanted to make "Sub-heading" as a child of "Heading"?

Edit the Heading 3 text style (not TOC 1: Heading 3), click Style on the left, and select Sub-heading from Next Level. The Next Level field controls the text style hierarchy.

[Hexara]

Thank you guys, it's clear now, but I have another issue.

When I use text styles 1. Numbering and 1.1 Numbering, the TOC shows the headings to the right:

[MikeTO]

46 minutes ago, Hexara said:

Thank you guys, it's clear now, but I have another issue.

When I use text styles 1. Numbering and 1.1 Numbering, the TOC shows the headings to the right:

Please refer to "Using numbered headings in a table of contents" on page 81 of the manual I shared in the forum, you can find it in the link in my signature. In short, you have to add another tab stop.

[Hexara]

On 9/30/2023 at 3:00 AM, MikeTO said:

Please refer to "Using numbered headings in a table of contents" on page 81 of the manual I shared in the forum, you can find it in the link in my signature. In short, you have to add another tab stop.

I followed your PDF but I'm still struggling, what I'm trying to achieve is this:

 

But instead, I get this:

 

Also how to make the page number column at the end of the text box instead of being right next to the titles?

[MikeTO]

1 hour ago, Hexara said:

I followed your PDF but I'm still struggling, what I'm trying to achieve is this:

Also how to make the page number column at the end of the text box instead of being right next to the titles?

My instructions just said to edit TOC 1: Heading 1 but I need to clarify that it's the heading level you want to change so you might need to edit TOC 1: Heading 2 instead.

I suggest turning on Text > Show Special Characters so you can see what's going on.

The TOC is at the top of this screenshot, the body text is below. In the body text you'll see that Heading2 is a numbered paragraph. In the TOC above Publisher duplicated this style so there's a tab between 1. and Heading 2. But there's also a tab between Heading 2 and the page number 1 at the end.

When I inserted the TOC its TOC 1: Heading 1 and TOC 1: Heading 2 text styles each had one right-aligned tab stop set to 0 from right to right align the page number. That worked fine for Heading 1 which is not numbered but for a numbered list it doesn't work because there's an extra tab stop between the paragraph number and heading text. Publisher should define the TOC text style better but since it doesn't it's up to you to modif it.

Just edit TOC 1: Heading 1 or 2 as appropriate, click Tab Stops, and add a new tab stop. It should be left aligned (the default). You're using picas so perhaps start with a value of 3p and increase or decrease it. A tab stop of 3p fixed this example:

[Hexara]

@MikeTO

I followed your instructions and still can't figure it out, I don't know how they couldn't make it a bit easier, this app is really stressing me out to use.

 

And why does it keep doubling the bullets of the original headings?

[MikeTO]

If you're using numbered paragraphs for both Heading 1 and heading 2, you'll need to add the extra tab for both of them.

Can you upload a test document with just as much as you've shown here? I could take a look.

Cheers,

Mike

[Hexara]

3 minutes ago, MikeTO said:

If you're using numbered paragraphs for both Heading 1 and heading 2, you'll need to add the extra tab for both of them.

Can you upload a test document with just as much as you've shown here? I could take a look.

Cheers,

Mike

Here you goASSETS.afpub  

[MikeTO]

This document has a number of issues.

1. Place the text cursor in the body text frame.
2. Using the Text Styles panel, click the menu icon to the right of the numbered Heading 1 style and choose Edit.
   1. Click Bullets and Numbering in the left pane.
   2. In the Text field, remove the trailing space. Maybe you wanted it there for some reason but it's messing up the TOC's heading indent.
   3. Click OK.
3. Place the text cursor in the TOC heading text.
4. Using the TOC panel, click the menu icon to the right of Heading 1, Heading 2, and Heading 3 in the list of text styles at the bottom. It will open a popup window. For Heading 1, change Indent Level to 1. For Heading 2, change it to 2 and select Include Page Number. For Heading 3, change it to 3 and select Include Page Number.
5. Using the Text Styles panel, click the menu icon to the right of TOC 1: Heading 1 and choose Edit. You deleted the original tab stop when adding the new one.
   1. First, the new one is too narrow at 3mm, that is narrower than the A. before Heading. Click in the text field and make it wider, perhaps 10mm or 3p. I imagine you followed the instructions to set it to 3p but your test document was mm and you just typed 3 instead of 3p.
   2. Click the Add New Tab Stop button below the list - the new one will default to 6mm in this document. Change it to 0. Click the alignment (the next control) and change it to Right. Click the ellipsis control and select "From Right".
   3. Click OK - these steps will fix the heading 1 entries in the TOC.
6. Click the menu icon to the right of TOC 1: Heading 2 and choose Edit.
   1. For this one you changed the existing 0 tab to 194mm and made it left aligned but it's still "From Right". Change it to 0 and Right aligned.
   2. Click the Add New Tab Stop button below the list - the new one will default to 6mm in this document. Make this one 10mm or whatever you want. 
   3. Click OK
7. Click the menu icon to the right of TOC 1: Heading 2 and choose Edit.
   1. For this one you changed the existing 0 tab to 137mm but it's still right aligned and "From Right". Change it to 0.
   2. Click the Add New Tab Stop button below the list - the new one will default to 12.7mm in this document. Make this one 10mm or whatever you want. 
   3. Click OK

Here's the fixed test document.

Good luck.

ASSETS.afpub

[Hexara]

Thank you so much! It's a bit too much complicated but I figured it out at last, thank you for fixing the file and uploading it as well, it helped me a lot to better understand the instructions.

[stevewhit]

just want to add my thanks to this topic - I have been struggling with styles on my TOC for a couple of weeks now- your manual had been great MikeTO (much appreciated for your work) but Layer hierarchy and The next level field are 2 pieces of great advice - I had it right on 3 chapters but not on the fourth and fifth.