Re: Chapter TOC plug-in?

[Dan Emory <danemory@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 10:46 AM 3/21/01 -0800, Russ Wyllie wrote:
>Is there a commercially-available FrameMaker plug-in that helps with the
>creation of chapter tables of contents? A company I used to work for had
>such a plug-in, but the start-up I'm at now doesn't have the resources
>in-house to write one.
>
>The "by hand" process of creating chapter TOCs involves:
>
>* Creating individual book files that generate the chapter TOCs for each
>chapter.
>
>* Creating one big book file that contains all the chapters and generated
>TOCs for generating the book TOC and printing the entire book.
>
>The "by hand" method is a major pain for books with lots of chapters. I
>don't mind the one-time setup of all the book files, but re-generating all
>those chapter TOCs every time the book changes is pretty mind numbing.
>
>It sure would be nice to feed a list of chapter book files along with the
>big book file name to a plug-in, and have it do all the TOC generations and
>book updating. Does this plug-in exist somewhere?

The easiest way to do this is to import the Chapter TOCs as text insets. 
Proceed as follows:

1. Open any chapter file in the book, and generate a TOC for that chapter. 
In Frame V 5.5.6 or earlier, this is done by choosing Frame > Generate 
Book, and
setting up for the generation of a TOC, in which you specify which 
paragraph tags you want to include in the chapter TOC. This will create a 
new generated file named chapname.TOC, where chapname is the stemname of 
the chapter file from which the generated TOC was produced. Note that the 
chapter file you choose for this purpose should have instances of all the 
paragraph tags you want to include in the chapter TOCs. DO NOT save this 
file under the name chapname.TOC. Keep it open, and proceed to step 2.

2. Save (but do not close) the newly generated file under the name 
ChapTOCTemplate.. Choose View > Reference Pages, and go to the Reference 
page named TOC. This reference page contains the default specifications for 
generating the TOC. Make any required modifications to these default 
specifications. There will be a separate paragraph tag produced for each 
tag you included in the generated TOC, having the tagname paratagnameTOC, 
where paratagname is the name of the paragraph tag you selected for 
inclusion when you generated the TOC. Make any required modifications to 
these paragraph formats. DO NOT add the paratagnameTOC paragraphs in 
reference page TOC to the paragraph catalog of the ChapTOCTemplate file. Do 
not close the file. Instead, proceed to step 3

3. In the new file, ChapTOCTemplate, created in step 2, delete all 
reference pages except the reference page named TOC, and save (but do not 
close) the file.

4. With the book file open, choose File > Import > Formats. In the Import 
Formats dialog:
         a. Choose ChapterTOCTemplate from the Import From document menu.
         b. In the Import and Update section, turn off everything except 
Reference Pages.
         c. Move all of the Chapter files into the Update list.
         d. Click the Import button. This will add the TOC reference page 
to the reference page set in all of your chapter files.
DO NOT add the paratagnameTOC paragraphs in reference page TOC to the 
paragraph catalogs of the chapter files

5. If there are existing copies of the chapname.TOC files, delete all of 
them. Then, open each chapter file, and generate a new chapter TOC, 
specifying the same paragraph tags for inclusion in the TOC that you 
specified in Step 1. Each generated file will have the name chapname.TOC.

6. In each Chapter file, put the text cursor at the location (usually an 
empty paragraph) where you want to insert the chapter TOC. Then, choose 
File > Import  > File. In the Import dialog, put the name of the 
corresponding chapname.TOC file in the File Name slot, turn on Import by 
Reference, and click the Import button. The Import Text Flow By Reference 
dialog appears. In that dialog, turn on Body Page Flow, Retain Source's 
Formatting, and Automatic, then click the Import button. The 
imported-by-reference chapname.TOC file now appears as a text inset at the 
insertion point. DO NOT delete the chapname.TOC files, otherwise the source 
of the text insets will be lost.

7. Once you have completed steps 1 thru 6, all you have to do to update the 
TOC in each chapter file is open each chapter file, regenerate the chapter 
TOC, and double-click on the text inset to open the Text Inset Properties 
dialog. Then, simply click the Update Now button. The text inset will now 
reflect the latest version of chapname.TOC.

8. If you later decide to modify the formatting of the chapter TOCs, 
proceed as follows:
         a. Open file ChapTOCTemplate, make the required modifications to 
the formatting, and save (but do not close) the file:
         b. Import only the reference page from ChapTOCTemplate into each 
of the chapname.TOC files so as to update their TOC reference pages
         c. Perform step 4 so as to update the TOC reference pages in each 
of the chapter files.
         d. Perform step 7 to update the TOC text inset in each chapter file.




====================
| Nullius in Verba |
====================
Dan Emory, Dan Emory & Associates
FrameMaker/FrameMaker+SGML Document Design & Database Publishing
Voice/Fax: 949-722-8971 E-Mail: danemory@primenet.com
177 Riverside Ave., STE F, #1151, Newport Beach, CA 92663
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