How do I group TOC entries without counting as a level?

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bwofficer
Propeller Head
Posts: 57
Joined: Tue May 12, 2020 2:16 am

How do I group TOC entries without counting as a level?

Post by bwofficer »

I've enabled the Use TOC depth for heading levels feature in my PDF target so that I can use my TOC to organise my topics hierarchically. It's the first time I've tried this. It works OK to begin with: the first heading in a topic placed underneath a top level topic has its title heading demoted from h1 to h2 in the built PDF, etc., just as I expected. The problem comes when I try to distinguish between the main body of the manual and the appendices.

My first thought was to use TOC books. I created one called Main body and another called Appendices. I dragged the main body topics into the Main body book, but this has the effect of demoting main body topics to h2. I had hoped they'd remain at h1 - I'd assumed books were different from regular TOC entries and wouldn't count as a level of the TOC hierarchy, especially as the book TOC entries aren't linked to a topic so are in effect empty containers.

Here's how it currently looks in my TOC:
Hierarchical TOC in Flare.png
Is there any way to tell Flare to ignore the empty books so that the first level of true topics (topics named Product description, Installation and set-up, and Use in this particular example) have h1 titles, with their sub-topics having h2 titles etc.? I could simply change the CSS for my heading styles so that h2 is formatted the way I want a top level topic heading to look, etc. but that's a pain and it might confuse anyone else trying to use this project.

Should I instead insert the unlinked Main body and Appendices books at the same level as the top level topics, using them to mark the start of the main body and start of the appendices rather than actually containing the topics that belong to each section? Here's what I mean:
Hierarchical TOC 2 in Flare.png
That would be using them like I'd use the cardboard tabbed dividers in a ring binder.

Am I simply doing the wrong thing completely in trying to use TOC books to indicate which top-level topics are part of the main body and which are part of the appendices? Should I be using a different feature? Is this what Sections are for? Or Volumes?

Any advice gratefully received!
Bruce
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Jim Casey
Jr. Propeller Head
Posts: 8
Joined: Wed Jul 13, 2022 11:31 am

Re: How do I group TOC entries without counting as a level?

Post by Jim Casey »

I'm trying to accomplish the same objective. It ain't easy.

Excuse me if I explain something that you already know, but it doesn't seem to be well documented.

The root of the problem is the way that heading levels map into entries in the print table of contents. H1 headings map into p.TOC1, H2 into p.TOC2, and so forth.

You can't create a heading level higher than 1.

This mapping is controlled by the mc-heading-level attribute, which you can see in your stylesheet:
Heading Level1.png
I've tried changing the mapping levels of the heading tags. Everything I did has unintended consequences.
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