Yet another TOC depth issue in PDF output

[Rona Kwestel]

Apologies if this has been addressed in another thread, but I couldn't find this exact issue.

• My topics all start with H1 headings at the top, and work their way down as needed.
• My TOC has nested topics, where the book topics are linked, so something like this:

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Topic 1
  Topic 1A
  Topic 1B
Topic 2
  Topic 2A
Topic3

• In the stylesheet, I have mc-heading-level set to 0 for h3-h6.
• In the PDF target, I have "Use TOC depth for heading levels" checked.

What I want the TOC to look like in the output is exactly what it looks like in the TOC above. What I'm getting instead is this:

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Topic 1
  Topic 1 h2 headings
  Topic 1A
  Topic 1B
Topic 2
  Topic 2 h2 headings
  Topic 2A
Topic 3
  Topic 3 h2 headings

The problem with this is that I don't want the h2 headings of the book-level topics to be as "important" as the nested h1 headings.

Is there a way to get the printed TOC to appear just as it does in the project TOC, up through implied level h2?

[Rona Kwestel]

In thinking about this some more, I guess the reason this happens is that I've told Flare to push down the "importance" of those nested topics, so that they effectively become styled in the content at the same level as the subheadings in the "parent topic". In that case, it would be illogical for some "h2" headings to appear in the TOC and others not to appear. Ugh. This is why I dislike these PDFs. It's so confounding.

I suppose this is why people end up using "Chapter" titles, so you would have something like this:

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Chapter 1
  Topic 1
  Topic 1A
  Topic 1B
Chapter 2
  Topic 2
  Topic 2A
Chapter 3
  Topic 3

But it just feels too "bookish", somehow. And means I'd need to create a separate TOC for the PDF to keep it clean; I've been sharing the same TOC for both PDF and HTML5 using conditions on the front matter. I guess I'll just live with the way it is now, unless someone has some other insight.

Thanks.