Heading level inconsistencies

[jpeffley]

I have Use TOC depth for heading levels checked.
I have indented topics/boooks in my TOC thusly:

Book A (linked to Topic 1)
..Topic 2
..Topic 3
..Book B (linked to Topic 4)
....Topic 5
....Topic 6
Book C (linked to Topic 7)
etc

All topics have an h1. Most topics also have h2 and h3 headings.
The TOC looks fine. However, the headings in the printed output are indented like this:
Book A h1
..Topic 2 h1
....Topic 2 h2 (skipping ahead here)
..Book B h1
....Topic 5 h1
.........Topic 5 h2

For some reason, when we get down to the h2s that are Book > Book > Topic, they're indented too far. I can't find anywhere in the css that controls the indent that's created when the headings are adjusted for the TOC depth.

I can correct this by making my document structure flatter (so that I don't have Book > Book > Topic), but that means I'm artificially structuring my document because of tool limitations.

Any ideas?

[LTinker68]

The TOC looks fine. However, the headings in the printed output are indented like this:
Book A h1
..Topic 2 h1
....Topic 2 h2 (skipping ahead here)
..Book B h1
....Topic 5 h1
.........Topic 5 h2

I'm a little confused. The h2 is indented below the h1 which would make sense as it's a sub-heading in that topic and not the main heading. Are you saying you want h2 to be at the same level as h1 in the printed TOC? If that's the case, then you need to set the mc-heading-level for h2 to "1" so that it's at the same level as h1, and I think you'd have to turn off the TOC depth option.

[KevinDAmery]

I don't think that TOC styles for headings assigned this way are any different from TOC styles assigned to "normal" headings (with the exception that they are moved deeper into the hierarchy depending on which level the topic is on in the project's TOC, of course, which is the whole point of the TOC Depth feature). The styles used in the TOC are classes in the P style. In your stylesheet if you open the P style group you'll see TOC1, TOC2, etc. This is where you would change the indent level etc.

[jpeffley]

I don't think I'm explaining my problem. If you look at the last item, you'll see that it is indented more - like it skips a level or something. I can't figure out why Flare pushes that heading (which is an h2...but an h2 in a topic that's in a book that's in another book) so far right.

As I said, I've flattened out my book structure, and then everything is fine, but that's not the way I want the book to be set up. I've also played with making all of the h2, h3, h4 have the same indents, so it doesn't matter where they fall in the book structure - but then you lose the sense of what's primary, what's subordinate, etc.

Previously, I had the topics set up with duplicate headings for print only and I set those tags so that they were correct in the book structure. But I thought using the TOC depth for headings would eliminate the need for that. Except it doesn't seem to work as I would like it.

[LTinker68]

Ok, I think I get what you're saying.

In the TOC Editor, you have it set up like the following:

Code: Select all

Book A h1
..Topic 2 h1
Book B h1
..Topic 5 h1

But in the generated TOC, you get the h2 levels indented. What you need to do is in the print medium for the stylesheet, set the mc-heading-level for the h2, h3, and h4 tags to be "1" -- that'll put them at the same heading level in the generated TOC as the h1 tag.

In one of my projects (that has "Use TOC levels..." enabled), I have the base h4 tag set to mc-heading-level = 0 so that that tag doesn't appear in the generated output. I then have a class of h4 (called tocInclude) that has a mc-heading-level = 4, so that it does appear in the generated TOC. So you just need to change the mc-heading level for all heading tags that you want to be at the same level as the h1 tag. Although to be honest I haven't tried that -- I've always just turned the heading on or off, not changed its level, but that should work.