Re: 3 TOC problems

[Rhea Tolman <rhea@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Bart Windrum wrote:

> Three TOC problems:
>
> 1. although the tab character (<$paratext><leaderTabHere><$pagenum> appears
> on the TOC reference page for each style in use, on the body pages no tabs
> appear, only a word space in place of the tab...

It's not enough to have the tab on the reference page. You have to have a tab
in each TOC paragraph tag as well. This tab is the one that tells FrameMaker
exactly where to place the material, and whether its FR, FL, has a leader, etc.
Formatting the TOC paragraph tags is where you really get to control the look
of your TOC. The reference page syas *what* to put in the TOC, the TOC tags
themselves say *how* it should look.

> 2. I have a graphic (product logo) at the top of the first page of the TOC,
> directly below that I typeset the doc name. Two problems w/this:
>
> a) I've made a paratext variable based on the tag used to format this text
> (the doc name) and call that variable in a running footer on subsequent TOC
> pages. If the frame in which this text appears (as described above) is on
> the master page -- where it must apparently be or it's not applied when
> importing formats from the master TOC design file to a new TOC) -- then the
> running footer<>variable link breaks...

Do you mean that you're using one of the Running H/F variables in the master
page footer? If so, it should work, assuming that you haven't made any typos
and have referenced the tag name exactly. That's a fairly elaborate piece of
syntax, and easy to get wrong: you used <$paratext[paratag]>, yes?  It might be
easier to just define a plain old text variable whose contents are the name of
the doc.

> b) to ensure that this type will not get stripped out when updating the TOC
> I've placed it in a hand-drawn background frame. But I'm concerned that in
> the event of html conversion, or future help systems based on this source,
> this info will not show up since it's not in flow A...

Typically, you don't want the contents of footers in your HTML output.  But I'm
not clear on exactly what you're doing. Thomas Michanek revealed one of the
great secrets of FrameMaker TOCs to you. It changed my life when I figured it
out: In a TOC, any material whose tag name ends in TOC get replaced whenever
the TOC is regenerated. Anything whose tag does NOT end in TOC is untouched.

HTH,

Rhea Tolman
unemployed senior tech writer, Santa Cruz, CA


** To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@omsys.com **
** with "unsubscribe framers" (no quotes) in the body.   **