found a gem: table of contents

[mdhills]

Was just reading through Clive Huggan’s "Bend Word to your Will"
tutorial and stumbled across a tip that directly addressed an issue I
am facing this week:

I really dislike how long figure captions will end up interfering with
the page numbers when included in the "List of Figures". I was
resigning myself to hand-editing the table immediately before final
output before stumbling across this gem:

"One instance of changing the style of toc entries would be to prevent
text from getting too close to the page numbers before starting a new
line. You can do this by moving the right-hand indent in, as shown
here (the right-hand tab stop shows where the page numbers are right-
aligned, just before 15 cm on the ruler; the right indent marker (blue
triangle) shows the maximum extent of text before it goes to a new
line)"

No idea why, but I'd never realized that the "right indent" was
anything other than the right margin. Really cool to learn about
this.

(Actually, I much prefer short titles in a List of Figures. When
using LaTeX, this can be done by including an extra field in the
caption command that is used in the list of figures in lieu of the
whole caption. Anyone do something similar for Word?)

Matt

 

[Clive Huggan]

Thanks for your kind comment, Matt. It's good to have feedback out of the
blue. So much of what's in "Bend Word to Your Will" is stimulated by
questions and comments here, and particularly by solutions given by my
learned fellow-volunteer friends here. Your bringing it up reminded me of
the delight I experienced when I experimented a few years back and found it
worked. And once done, it just works!

Concerning short titles in a List of Figures: I create a new paragraph style
for the overly-long captions, with appearance similar to how I have the
inbuilt Caption style. Then, immediately underneath it, I place a shorter
version of the caption wording in a paragraph using the inbuilt Caption
style -- but I modify the Caption style by adding "hidden text" to its
characteristics. I set Word to display hidden text as visible. I then
compile the list from the truncated captions.

I save time after setting up the first instance by creating an AutoText item
from the two paragraphs. After that, a simple keyboard shortcut inserts them
(see the article 'Example ‹ creating and inserting a pre-formatted table via
AutoText' on page 124 of "Bend Word to Your Will" and draw the parallels).

The alternative is to include the "expansionary" element on the caption on a
new line, which is actually a new paragraph with zero leading, in a style
you design that has the same appearance as the figure caption style.

Play around on a "Saved As" copy... ;-)

Cheers,

Clive Huggan
Canberra, Australia
(My time zone is 5-11 hours different from the Americas and Europe, so my
follow-on responses to those regions can be delayed)
====================================================

 

[John McGhie]

I am sure Mssr Huggan noted that you MUST set the TOC format to "From
Template" before you can make any lasting changes to the TOC Styles. If you
forget, your TOC style formats will be overwritten every time Word
regenerates the TOC.

Now you have done that, you may want to also deal with the problem of the
leader dots colliding with the page number. To do this, set a Left tab to
occur half a centimetre before the page numbers, and a Right tab to occur
where you want the right boundary of the page number.

Put leader dots on one, and none on the Right tab. Your Leader dots will
now end perfectly right-aligned before the page numbers.

Having done this, you will be struck by the fact that Word's leader dots are
far to damn BIG.

To deal with that, after compiling your TOC, search for ^t^t and replace
with ^t^t and set the Format of the Replacement to replace with 8 pt font.
Your leader dots will shrink to 3/4 size. I often turn them medium-grey at
the same time

There you go: try THAT in LaTex

Cheers

Was just reading through Clive Huggan¹s "Bend Word to your Will"
tutorial and stumbled across a tip that directly addressed an issue I
am facing this week:

I really dislike how long figure captions will end up interfering with
the page numbers when included in the "List of Figures". I was
resigning myself to hand-editing the table immediately before final
output before stumbling across this gem:

"One instance of changing the style of toc entries would be to prevent
text from getting too close to the page numbers before starting a new
line. You can do this by moving the right-hand indent in, as shown
here (the right-hand tab stop shows where the page numbers are right-
aligned, just before 15 cm on the ruler; the right indent marker (blue
triangle) shows the maximum extent of text before it goes to a new
line)"

No idea why, but I'd never realized that the "right indent" was
anything other than the right margin. Really cool to learn about
this.

(Actually, I much prefer short titles in a List of Figures. When
using LaTeX, this can be done by including an extra field in the
caption command that is used in the list of figures in lieu of the
whole caption. Anyone do something similar for Word?)

Matt

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Sydney, Australia. mailto:[email protected]

 

[mdhills]

I am sure Mssr Huggan noted that you MUST set the TOC format to "From
Template" before you can make any lasting changes to the TOC Styles.  If you
forget, your TOC style formats will be overwritten every time Word
regenerates the TOC.

Yup, I've picked up on that from his and other tutorials.
I hadn't paid much attention before; but it is remarkable how much
Word
tries to (re)do by itself. Numbering being the other excellent
example.
(I think Clive offered up your pimply teenager quote at the outset of
his tutorial)

Having done this, you will be struck by the fact that Word's leader dots are
far to damn BIG.

Was curious about this, as I was going to increase letter spacing
instead to lighten the effect a bit. Went to check a handful of books
for comparison, and they pretty uniformly did not place the page
numbers right-aligned and did not use the dots. For the professionals
here, what are the general style considerations for this?
e.g.,
Chapter 17 Inferior Peduncle 512
17.1 An Introduction to this Unique and
Controversial Structure 513
17.2 Early Discoveries 532
17.3 Relationship to the Superior Peduncle 541

(and wouldn't you know that Clive had already posted his solution to
abbreviated ToC captions just 3 days earlier)


Matt

 

[Clive Huggan]

Below.

CH
==

I am sure Mssr Huggan noted that you MUST set the TOC format to "From
Template" before you can make any lasting changes to the TOC Styles. If you
forget, your TOC style formats will be overwritten every time Word
regenerates the TOC.

I did; but I had never thought about the following, which is now included
(attributed) in the next edition of "Bend Word to Your Will", which I must
complete over Christmas - New Year.

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Matt:

OK, you are using both heading numbering and page numbers in your TOC.

That means you need THREE tabs, not two, because the tab between the
numbering and the Heading text will be passed through by the TOC generator.

I like to line up the heading text on that first tab (it's a Left tab) so
that you do not get a ragged left text margin produced by the difference in
widths of the number characters. The reader can scan the TOC much more
quickly if the heading text forms a "column" distinct from the heading
number.

Then, I like to Indent the TOC levels a quarter of a centimetre, so that
Heading 1 goes flush left, heading 2 is indented a quarter, and heading 3 is
indented half a centimetre. You would only do that for a large (multi-page)
TOC. It assists the reader's eye to stay on track when they're scanning
down a large TOC.

I roundly protest the disgusting modern habit of ragged-right page numbers
This objectionable personal habit has been inflicted upon us by
Generation Y, which lacks the attention span to set up their leader dots
correctly!!! I am a grumpy old fart who has been at this about 40 years. I
realise that you can "get away" with it by using lots and lots of leading on
an expanded line-height. But if you do not do both of those, you end up
with "grey porridge" and the reader has to extract the information character
by character, like pulling teeth from a crocodile...

So for me, it's small grey leader dots ending two ems from the left of the
largest page number.

This can be a very compact layout. The leader dots mean you can scrunch the
leading and the line heights up until you are almost over-piled without
inconveniencing the reader too badly.

And if you are not quite that tight, it provides a pleasing visual balance.
Maybe five points space above (extra lead) on the TOC 1 style, to chunk the
TOC into chapters for the reader.

Another trick I sometimes use is to suppress the page number from the
Heading 1's. This provides further visual chunking, and if the book design
is even slightly optimised, the first Heading 2 will occur on the same page
as the Chapter and give us the page number.

Anyone who publishes folio by chapter these days will receive a visit from
the Colombian Death Squads...

Hope this helps

Yup, I've picked up on that from his and other tutorials.
I hadn't paid much attention before; but it is remarkable how much
Word
tries to (re)do by itself. Numbering being the other excellent
example.
(I think Clive offered up your pimply teenager quote at the outset of
his tutorial)


Was curious about this, as I was going to increase letter spacing
instead to lighten the effect a bit. Went to check a handful of books
for comparison, and they pretty uniformly did not place the page
numbers right-aligned and did not use the dots. For the professionals
here, what are the general style considerations for this?
e.g.,
Chapter 17 Inferior Peduncle 512
17.1 An Introduction to this Unique and
Controversial Structure 513
17.2 Early Discoveries 532
17.3 Relationship to the Superior Peduncle 541

(and wouldn't you know that Clive had already posted his solution to
abbreviated ToC captions just 3 days earlier)


Matt

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Sydney, Australia. mailto:[email protected]