Changing the Index Proxy format

[ChrisBradley]

Group,
I'm trying to make two changes to my index proxy, but I can't find where in the style sheet to do so.

I want to make the proxy letter headings left justified (instead of center), and add the leading periods between the term and the page number. Below is an example of what I am getting right now:



I'm in in the Madcap | IndexProxy style in advance view.

Thanks for any help!

[Nita Beck]

You don't need to do anything to the index proxy. What you need to do is adjust the styles that control the index heading and the index entry levels.

To left-justify the index heading, modify the p.IndexHeading style. Include this attribute:

text-align: left;

To add the leader to the index level entries, modify the p.Index1, p.Index2, etc. styles. Include this attribute:

mc-leader-format: 'dot';


Hope this helps.

[ChrisBradley]

That worked great! Thanks for the advice.

[alaltenburg]

I just added the dots to my index proxy. Never thought about how to do that, but now it works and looks great

Thanks!
Andrea

[ChrisBradley]

Next question. My index page layout is formated with 2 columns. How do I span my h1 heading across both columns?

[LTinker68]

Unless this was changed in v6, you couldn't do it in the topic and had to cheat. The easiest way to cheat is to create a page layout just for the index, and on the First page of the page layout, put your heading text (e.g., "Index") into a decoration frame just above the body frame. The body frame you set up for the columns, and it's the body frame that will pull in the indexProxy from your topic (so don't include a heading in your topic, or if you need to include it for online output, make sure to condition out the heading for print output). Follow the First page with a Normal page or Left/Right pages, which won't have the decoration frame and heading like the First page does. Make sure in the TOC that you specify the new page layout and that it starts with the First page.

[Harrison73]

I was having exactly the same problem with the Heading not spanning across both Index columns, and your solution fixed it perfectly.

However, now I have a new problem that there is no longer an "Index" entry in the Bookmarks pane of the PDF. The last entry in my TOC is called Index and it links to my index topic which contains nothing but the Index proxy now. When I had a Heading above it, I guess that was forcing an entry in the bookmarks pane. When I took out the Heading and just put the title in the Page layout, it fixed the span but now there's no Bookmark.

I was assuming that any book or topic link in my TOC would automatically equate to a bookmark in the Bookmarks pane when I went to PDF. But this doesn't seem to be the case based on my current situation.

[LTinker68]

There are two options to fix that, although I can't remember if the second one actually worked.

Option 1: Create a custom h1 class, set its font size to something really small, and set its display attribute to "none" or "hidden". I think the choice is none. You might want to wait to change that attribute until you've added the heading to the index topic so that you can see what you're typing (or you could manually add the text to the page code). Setting the font to be really small and setting it to basically be invisible should keep it from appearing in the page (or rather, being so small as to not take too much space in the generated topic), but still allow it to be listed in the generated TOC.

Option 2: Disregard the solution in my previous post about putting the heading in the page layout. Instead, put the heading in one topic file and the indexProxy in another topic file. Put the indexProxy topic after the heading topic in the TOC. I just can't remember if you still put the new chapter and specify the new page layout on the heading topic file or on the indexProxy topic file. I think if you put it on the indexProxy topic file then doing so automatically forces that indexProxy topic onto the following page instead of putting it immediately after the heading topic, even if the h1 class has page-break-after set to avoid. Version 6 might have fixed that, but I think I reported it once and I didn't get a notification that it's been fixed, so it might still be a problem. So for your page layout, you might have to set the First page as having a normal body frame, and the Normal or Left/First pages as having the columned body frame. You then apply the new page layout to the heading topic in the TOC, and hopefully the index will fall on the same page as the heading in the final output, even though they're actually two different topics.

Sorry, it's been awhile since I've had to do a print output with an index, so I don't remember how I got the index and its heading to appear correctly.

[ChrisBradley]

I found an article in the online help that worked with my heading spanning issue.

Rather than explain it all again, search for a topic called "Heading Examples." Example 1 is what I followed, which was to create a heading decoration frame in the index page layout. This produced the output I needed.

Thanks for all the help!

EDIT: Oops. I somehow missed that Lisa answered the question above. Sorry!