Mini-TOCs

[katannie]

My mini-TOCs work fine in WebHelp output, but not in PDF or Word output. I stumbled upon (and read) a discussion about this issue on a Flare 4.0 blog. I'm having the same problem in Flare 6.1. Is this a known issue, and if so, is there a work-around? When might we expect a fix? My doc team is depending on this functionality. Anyone? Thanks much!

[Andrew]

My mini-TOCs work perfectly in PDF (and, I believe, in Word too, though I don't pay too much attention to Word output). What's going wrong?

[katannie]

Thanks for responding, Andrew.

The mini-toc's appear, as expected, in the WebHelp output, but they don't appear at all in Word or PDF output. Here's how I set up my project:


General TOC (linked to a topic that contains a full TOC proxy) (TOC appears in all output types)
Book A (linked to a topic that contains a mini-toc proxy) (Mini-toc appears only in WebHelp output)
Topic 1 (with H1 heading; child of Book A)
Topic 2 (with H1 heading; child of Book A)
Book B (linked to a topic that contains a mini-toc proxy) (Mini-toc appears only in WebHelp output)
Topic 1 (with H1 heading; child of Book B)
Topic 2 (with H1 heading; child of Book B)

We use the same style sheet for all types of output, so I don't think it's a styles issue. Please note that the topics are children of the books under which they're listed. I couldn't get the indentation to show up here.

[katannie]

A bit more info: I just created a test project using the default Flare styles, and I'm experiencing the same problem. The mini-TOCs show up and work fine in WebHelp output, but not in Word. When I built the project, I specified Word as the primary output. When I compiled, the mini-TOCs were not visible in the output. I then specified WebHelp as the primary output. The mini-TOCs appear and work fine.

[Andrew]

Does the print document contain the dotted line of the miniTOC, but no entries? If so, I suspect the print miniTOC thinks there are no headings below it that are appropriate to include.

As far as I know, for print docs, the mini-TOC does *not* rely upon the TOC itself (as I think it does for WebHelp -- but I haven't used miniTOCs in WebHelp). Instead, it relies purely upon heading level. So a miniTOC contains anything at or below its heading hierarchy level. Its level is the same as any heading that is contained by the heading that most directly contains it. For example:

Code: Select all

h1
 p
 miniTOC
 h2
  p
  p
  h3
   p
   p
  h3
   p
   p
 h2
  p
  p

Because the miniTOC above is a direct child of the h1, its hierarchy level is at the h2 level, so it will contain anything at or below h2. If you moved it underneath the h2, it would contain everything at or below h3.

A couple of additional provisos:
1) miniTOCs only go as "deep" as they are set to go (i.e., as many levels down the hierarchy). I think the default is 3 or 4 levels deep, but I'm not sure. You can manually set the number of levels when you insert the miniTOC, or set the number in your stylesheet.

2) Also, a miniTOC can only use and sequence heading levels according to the attribute set in the mc-heading-level CSS property for the heading (mc-heading-level can be found in the Print Support property group in the Stylesheet Editor). That is what determines the hierarchy level of each heading element or style class. Check to make sure those are specified correctly for your use (typically, this would me h1 is 1, h2 is 2, h3 is 3, etc.). Anything you want to treat as a regular paragraph (instead of a heading) for the purpose of TOCs should be set to 0.

Any of those being out of place may result in what you saw. That's where I'd start checking...hope that helps!

[Andrew]

A bit more info: I just created a test project using the default Flare styles, and I'm experiencing the same problem. The mini-TOCs show up and work fine in WebHelp output, but not in Word. When I built the project, I specified Word as the primary output. When I compiled, the mini-TOCs were not visible in the output. I then specified WebHelp as the primary output. The mini-TOCs appear and work fine.

Just tested, and miniTOCs work fine for me in Word output.

[katannie]

Thanks, Andrew. I remain perplexed. If it were any of the conditions you described, wouldn't the mini-TOCs fail to show up in all types of output? They're fine in WebHelp. To answer your questions, no, there's no dotted line. Just a blank.

[Andrew]

Thanks, Andrew. I remain perplexed. If it were any of the conditions you described, wouldn't the mini-TOCs fail to show up in all types of output? They're fine in WebHelp. To answer your questions, no, there's no dotted line. Just a blank.

I was thinking WebHelp might be based on the TOC, whereas print documentation, it's based on the heading.

Just a blank? Hmm. I'm out of ideas. Have you contacted MadCap Support?

[katannie]

Haven't contacted Support yet. That's the next step. Thanks for all your help.

[LTinker68]

I was thinking WebHelp might be based on the TOC, whereas print documentation, it's based on the heading

It might be affected by the "Use TOC levels for the headings" or whatever that option is in the target. If you have that enabled and you have the mini-TOC set to go down only one level and the generated output changes the heading tags to h3 tags, for example, then it may now be outside the scope of the mini-TOC and therefore not displayed.

[Andrew]

I was thinking WebHelp might be based on the TOC, whereas print documentation, it's based on the heading

It might be affected by the "Use TOC levels for the headings" or whatever that option is in the target. If you have that enabled and you have the mini-TOC set to go down only one level and the generated output changes the heading tags to h3 tags, for example, then it may now be outside the scope of the mini-TOC and therefore not displayed.

True, but even if that happened, you'd still (in my experience, anyway) see the top "border" of the miniTOC (the dashed line).

[LTinker68]

True, but even if that happened, you'd still (in my experience, anyway) see the top "border" of the miniTOC (the dashed line).

Unless you're like me and you've removed that top border.

[Andrew]

True, but even if that happened, you'd still (in my experience, anyway) see the top "border" of the miniTOC (the dashed line).

Unless you're like me and you've removed that top border.

Touche.