Table of Contents - Out of Control

[the_DZA]

Dear All Mellel People,

I'm in the latter stages of producing a long document, ie. 100,000+ words, using Mellel 2.5 (I know) and Bookends 10.5.3. I'm still using an iBook G4 so don't want to upgrade in case the whole thing grinds to a halt and these versions seem to be working fine and fairly stable.

I've been using Mellel/Bookends throughout the whole project, and although I understand the styles system pretty well now, I've not had to 'output' too many documents until now, when I'm getting full draft feedback etc.

I had a major deadline last week and came close to punching my computer screen due to the frustration of Mellel's formatting behaviour. Now that the panic is over (I made a ToC manually in the end), I'd like to work out how certain things should be done properly.

The first question I have, if anyone can help, is to do with making a ToC. Now, I understand the immense flexibility of having auto-titles with different para & char styles, which can correlated to different ToC styles etc... - but surely this system is just way too complex for anyone's needs? Or am I wrong?

I attempted to make a ToC using my carefully crafted auto-title setups, but - for one thing - you can't update a table once it's in place (as in Word) - and so need to make a new one each time you change anything. This would be okay, except the size of the table can affect the pagination and send the numbers out. Does anyone have any general tips on the best process for doing this?

More seriously I found that whenever I made a ToC - certain of the titles would randomly be distributed across pages - sometimes with what looked like page breaks between each line. In other words a ToC with, say, 40 lines would be split over 40 pages with one line on each. But there were no page breaks inserted, so there was no way to fix this. Has anyone ever experienced this? I couldn't spot any discernible pattern, but could try and recreate it - but maybe someone else has seen this happen?

Also, are there some sensible default ToC styles which can be distributed or downloaded or even shared between users? Not so much for fonts/styles - but more for the layout? It would be really useful to have a basic foolproof framework to start with - which I knew worked - which could then be customised slightly according to need. For example: Titles, 3 Parts, each of 3 chapters, each with 3 sections, with page numbers (of course). The Mellel User Guide is fairly minimal on this side of things, yet it's a fairly important aspect of finishing a project off.

I'm really dreading having to do this again in Mellel and if I can't work it out, the awful (and humiliating) spectre of moving everything back over to Word at this stage would become the lesser of two evils.

Does anyone have any thoughts? Much appreciated.

D

[florestan]

I agree with you that the current TOC setup is extremely complex, and perhaps not the easiest one to figure out. However, when you do, it does give you quite a lot of control over the appearance of your TOC.

I attempted to make a ToC using my carefully crafted auto-title setups, but - for one thing - you can't update a table once it's in place (as in Word) - and so need to make a new one each time you change anything.

That is a real annoyance, and it is actually a bit strange that the TOCs are not dynamic. Mellel shines in the area dynamic content (auto-titles numberings, cross-references etc.), so it is quite odd to me that TOCs are that primitive in this regard. Perhaps this is on the roadmap for a future version?

More seriously I found that whenever I made a ToC - certain of the titles would randomly be distributed across pages - sometimes with what looked like page breaks between each line. In other words a ToC with, say, 40 lines would be split over 40 pages with one line on each. But there were no page breaks inserted, so there was no way to fix this. Has anyone ever experienced this? I couldn't spot any discernible pattern, but could try and recreate it - but maybe someone else has seen this happen?

This happened to me as well. Recently, I had a 50-page document (my first done in Mellel), and when I came to making the same thing happened, exactly as you describe it. My solution was to make a new paragraph style for each TOC level (I just called them TOC Level 1, TOC Level 2 etc. in my custom style set). I cleared all the tabs from the ruler in each of these styles (except for one: which marked the position of the page numbering), and limited the space between the lines in the TOC, so that there would never be more than 30pts between TOC lines. In the end I made sure to update the auto-title setup with these styles (don't forget to save!).

Hope this helps. If you'd like a copy of my style sets so you can see exactly what I did, please feel free to send me you email address in a private message.

[ozean]

More seriously I found that whenever I made a ToC - certain of the titles would randomly be distributed across pages - sometimes with what looked like page breaks between each line. In other words a ToC with, say, 40 lines would be split over 40 pages with one line on each. But there were no page breaks inserted, so there was no way to fix this. Has anyone ever experienced this? I couldn't spot any discernible pattern, but could try and recreate it - but maybe someone else has seen this happen?

My guess is that the paragraph style that you use for your TOC has one or more of the “keep with next line” etc. options checked, which will cause a huge mess in the layout as you observed.

[the_DZA]

Hi Florestan,

Thanks for the message. I'm glad, although also disappointed, that this was not only my problem with the ToC. I think I also tried to create separate ToC styles to avoid the page-breaking problem, but still was nowhere near solving how to get page numbers to appear in a consistent column since the Tabs seemed very hard to control on the autotitle setup panel: they'd often jump onto the line below and behave weirdly. In addition, each time you want to check if your change has worked, you need to make another ToC... wait.... then work out what effect things had. It's quite laborious and counter-intuitive.

I'd be really grateful if you could send me your styles so I can have a look? I have already spent hours fiddling with styles to get them right, but am definitely getting quite close to the edge of patience.

I would love it if Mellel worked a little bit better in these ways, as it's so nice overall. Unfortunately, a little timer pops up in my head (saying 'Just Use Word!!') whenever I start fiddling with styles which reminds me that I'm fiddling when I should be working on my text...

Very grateful again for any further comments or advice?

dcsamuel-AT-gmail.com

[the_DZA]

Dear All,

I have returned to this task in the last few days. Florestan provided me a neat auto-title setup, which seemed to work fine. I customised it slightly and have been carefully re-assembling my long document in this format. I checked producing a ToC each time a pasted in a new chapter. It was working fine, until I got to the third chapter. To my horror, the same problem suddenly returned: the ToC suddenly includes page-breaks (with no page-break symbol) for the first seven or eight sub-sections (ie. with a separate page for each line) , and then the remainder of the ToC appears as normal, on one page.

Do any of you guys have any ideas on what's going on here?

Is it because the ToC is now spilling over onto more than one page? Surely, this shouldn't be a problem. I've unchecked the 'keep lines together options' in my ToC para styles, as Ozean suggested, but this makes no difference. The weird thing is that even when I revert to a previous file, in which the ToC was working fine, if I now produce a ToC for that smaller document, the same problem occurs.

Would gratefully appreciate any suggestions. Do Redlers have any suggestions? There is nothing in the user guide about this whatsoever.

[laup]

Sorry, I can't help except to say that I too have encountered the problem that you describe. After I tried various things the problem "went away" but I can't explain what I did; it was NOT, I believe, correcting my own errors. Rather, it was a matter, somehow, of avoiding an odd trap by doing things a bit differently. For example, I believe that I recall the TOC fixing itself (not having a page break) if I added a sentence in each chapter, rather than having just a placeholder title.

[DylanMuir]

ozean has the right idea. Make sure none of your TOC paragraph styles have a number greater than zero in the "keep with next x lines" box. That will fix it.

DRM

[the_DZA]

Thanks to all who helped, especially Ori Redler; the problem was caused by the 'Keep Lines Together' option being active in TOC styles. This is the case (in Mellel 2.5) even if you uncheck the box: the value in the lines box (underneath) must be set to zero to prevent this happening once ToCs become longer than one page.

[DylanMuir]

This is a general problem that can apply to any list of single-line paragraphs (like a list of headers), not just to TOCs. The "keep with next x lines" option for a paragraph can cause problems when not followed by another paragraph of breakable text.

DRM