feature request: TOC highlight / row separator

[thetasig]

If you edit the Text Style for "TOC 1: Entry", you can set the highlight to any color. This shades ALL the rows of the TOC. What would be very useful is to have the ability to highlight every other row using two colors. Optionally, to use a set of periods (.  = dot) like this: "Introduction................................................pg. 12" and finally, to be able to insert the hard-coded text "pg. " just before each page number. Other possibilities are a "header" row at the top with the "section" and "page". The reasons should be obvious - for a long set of contents, it is difficult for the eye to scan across from the "section" to the "page number" and still be on the same row. The highlighting or periods or some other visual aids (like the lines you can make visible in a "table"). If I'm missing some built-in feature, would be great to hear about it.

Examples attached.

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, thetasig said:

Optionally, to use a set of periods (.  = dot) like this: "Introduction................................................pg. 12" and finally, to be able to insert the hard-coded text "pg. " just before each page number.

You can already do those.

1. Leader dots: Paragraph panel, Tab Stops:

2. Pg: Table of Contents Panel, Separator: Just make it what you want. I chose to type Pg. into the box after the tab character.

[MikeW]

7 hours ago, thetasig said:

If you edit the Text Style for "TOC 1: Entry", you can set the highlight to any color. This shades ALL the rows of the TOC. What would be very useful is to have the ability to highlight every other row using two colors. ...

You can shade every other row (there is a bug, but it works). Unfortunately, the shading will go away when the TOC is regenerated/updated. So I would wait until formatting the TOC is the last thing to do.

So in the screen shot displayed below, there are two text boxes so once the formatting happens, you'll be able to still see the original.

Note the TOC Not Shaded paragraph style. TOC Shaded is based upon it. Both styles are linked as a Next Style so it will cycle through the paragraph styles.

Select the TOC entries:

Right-click over the TOC Not Shaded paragraph style and choose Apply TOC Not Shaded Then Apply Next.

And you would see this:

 

The (to me) bug is that each paragraph is actually the TOC Not Shaded style with the added highlight as an override. Each paragraph, even if based on, should have the actual paragraph style applied when doing the above.

Mike