Create a simple TOC, how?

[nlundberg]

Hi,

I would like to create a toc on a PDF (converted from DJVU). Just a simple one to jump to chapters in a 1000+ pages book.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by nlundberg

Hi,

I would like to create a toc on a PDF (converted from DJVU). Just a simple one to jump to chapters in a 1000+ pages book.

No automated way. Open the PDF in Acrobat and insert links manually.

Sorry. I'm sure that somebody, somewhere, has a faster/easier option, but the manual way is how I do it, when needed. I mean, realistically, there aren't a lot of PDFs, today, that come to life AS PDFs. As PDF is the end result of a process, most folks have the source docs, which facilitate making the links in a more-automated fashion. You, unfortunately, are stuck with the good old fashioned hand method.

(I would note that searching for the word Chapter, if it's used, makes it slightly less excruciating. For the project you've previously mentioned, the pdfs from websites, well...it's all manual. Sorry.)

Hitch

[Tex2002ans]

Many many years ago I used jpdfbookmarks:

http://flavianopetrocchi.blogspot.co...marks-252.html

Edit: I just looked up and saw that willus's fantastic tool, k2pdfopt also has an option "-toclist".

This allows you to create a simple text file:

1 Introduction
10 Chapter 1
+10 Chapter 1, Part A
+25 Chapter 1, Part B
++25 Chapter 1, Part B, Subsection 1
++27 Chapter 1, Part B, Subsection 2
+30 Chapter 1, Part C
50 Chapter 2
70 Chapter 3

and insert that as PDF bookmarks.

You can read more details in his "List of Command-Line Options" (and check the above thread too, willus has tons of answers about his program there).

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Tex2002ans

Many many years ago I used jpdfbookmarks:

http://flavianopetrocchi.blogspot.co...marks-252.html

Edit: I just looked up and saw that willus's fantastic tool, k2pdfopt also has an option "-toclist".

This allows you to create a simple text file:

1 Introduction
10 Chapter 1
+10 Chapter 1, Part A
+25 Chapter 1, Part B
++25 Chapter 1, Part B, Subsection 1
++27 Chapter 1, Part B, Subsection 2
+30 Chapter 1, Part C
50 Chapter 2
70 Chapter 3

and insert that as PDF bookmarks.

You can read more details in his "List of Command-Line Options" (and check the above thread too, willus has tons of answers about his program there).

Yeah, but AFAIK, this poster is downloading websites and converting them to PDFs for readability on his Kindle. I'm not sure how he can use k2pdfopt to create a TOC like that. But, hey, it'll be interesting to know how it goes!

Hitch

[willus]

Originally Posted by Tex2002ans

Many many years ago I used jpdfbookmarks:

http://flavianopetrocchi.blogspot.co...marks-252.html

Edit: I just looked up and saw that willus's fantastic tool, k2pdfopt also has an option "-toclist".

This allows you to create a simple text file:

1 Introduction
10 Chapter 1
+10 Chapter 1, Part A
+25 Chapter 1, Part B
++25 Chapter 1, Part B, Subsection 1
++27 Chapter 1, Part B, Subsection 2
+30 Chapter 1, Part C
50 Chapter 2
70 Chapter 3

and insert that as PDF bookmarks.

You can read more details in his "List of Command-Line Options" (and check the above thread too, willus has tons of answers about his program there).

If all you need to do is add a TOC/bookmarks, Coherent PDF (cpdf) is a better tool than k2pdfopt. It's an excellent PDF command-line tool to have in your arsenal--it can split, merge, add watermarks, etc., and it's super fast. See this link.

To list existing bookmarks:

cpdf -list-bookmarks input.pdf

0 "Part 1" 1 open
1 "Part 1A" 2
2 "Part 1B" 3
0 "Part 2" 4
1 "Part 2a" 5

I presume "open" is the bookmark you want the file to open to by default.

To add bookmarks:

cpdf -add-bookmarks bookmarks.txt input.pdf -o output.pdf

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by willus

If all you need to do is add a TOC/bookmarks, Coherent PDF (cpdf) is a better tool than k2pdfopt.

It's been at least 7 years since I had to add bookmarks to existing PDFs, so my info was probably a little out of date.

Originally Posted by Hitch

Yeah, but AFAIK, this poster is downloading websites and converting them to PDFs for readability on his Kindle. I'm not sure how he can use k2pdfopt to create a TOC like that. But, hey, it'll be interesting to know how it goes!

Hmmm... wonder if you could create a completed EPUB, generate a proper TOC, then pull the toc.ncx and get rid of all the xml cruft.

For example, Sigil formats the toc.ncx like:

Spoiler:

  <navMap>
    <navPoint id="navPoint-1" playOrder="1">
      <navLabel>
        <text>Part 1</text>
      </navLabel>
      <content src="Text/Section0001.xhtml#sigil_toc_id_1"/>
      <navPoint id="navPoint-2" playOrder="2">
        <navLabel>
          <text>Chapter 1</text>
        </navLabel>
        <content src="Text/Section0001.xhtml#sigil_toc_id_2"/>
      </navPoint>
    </navPoint>
    <navPoint id="navPoint-3" playOrder="3">
      <navLabel>
        <text>Part 2</text>
      </navLabel>
      <content src="Text/Section0001.xhtml#sigil_toc_id_3"/>
    </navPoint>
  </navMap>

Everything is already nested/indented in a certain way.

So you strip everything besides <text> and playOrder:

    playOrder="1"
        <text>Part 1</text>
      playOrder="2"
          <text>Chapter 1</text>
    playOrder="3"
        <text>Part 2</text>

Search and replace the Parts:

Search: ^\s+playOrder="(\d+)"\r\n[ ]{8}<text>(.+)</text>
Replace: 0 "\2" \1

0 "Part 1" 1
      playOrder="2"
          <text>Chapter 1</text>
0 "Part 2" 3

Key points being:

• Blue grabs the chronological numbering of all the headings.
• Red grabs how deep the levels are.
  
  • Note that Sigil's toc.ncx formats using 8 spaces for the first level (in PDF, the first level is considered "0").
• Green grabs the actual chapter titles.

Then you adjust the red part for "10 spaces" = next level:

Search: ^\s+playOrder="(\d+)"\r\n[ ]{10}<text>(.+)</text>
Replace: 1 "\2" \1

0 "Part 1" 1
1 "Chapter 1" 2
0 "Part 2" 3

then you would just have to go through and manually change the (blue) numbers to match the PDFs pages... but at least the bulk of the formatting would be completed.

[Marinolino]

Originally Posted by nlundberg

Hi,

I would like to create a toc on a PDF (converted from DJVU). Just a simple one to jump to chapters in a 1000+ pages book.

Also, if there is no TOC page we can create one to our liking (e.g. just with chapter's titles) and then link (hyperlink) those lines instead of creating bookmarks, or we can create both (linked TOC bookmarks and hyperlinked TOC page) at the same time.

Here is an older thread with some tools for the automatic and manual creation of a linked TOC, either as bookmarks or hyperlinked TOC page:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=262659

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Marinolino

Also, if there is no TOC page we can create one to our liking (e.g. just with chapter's titles) and then link (hyperlink) those lines instead of creating bookmarks, or we can create both (linked TOC bookmarks and hyperlinked TOC page) at the same time.

Here is an older thread with some tools for the automatic and manual creation of a linked TOC, either as bookmarks or hyperlinked TOC page:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=262659

I remember that thread, but in almost every instance, the TOC already existed, in the scanned document and all the posts were about how to automagically link said pre-existing TOC.

Unless I've misread this poster's threads, he is making pdfs from websites. Those aren't going to have preexisting TOCs with page numbers.

@Tex2002ans:

Yes, I suspect that's about the fastest way around it; create an ePUB, use headings (if they are not already there from the website), generate a TOC, etc.

Hitch

[Marinolino]

Originally Posted by Hitch

I remember that thread, but in almost every instance, the TOC already existed, in the scanned document and all the posts were about how to automagically link said pre-existing TOC.

Unless I've misread this poster's threads, he is making pdfs from websites. Those aren't going to have preexisting TOCs with page numbers.

...

In that case as I've suggested he can create a pdf TOC page himself (from a textual file or by using some pdf editor) consisting of chapter numbers or full chapter names, and than hyperlink those chapter names manualy using some pdf editor.

How to create an interactive (hyperlinked) table of contents with Acrobat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IR7FT3Pr4a0

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Marinolino

In that case as I've suggested he can create a pdf TOC page himself (from a textual file or using some pdf editor) consisting of chapter numbers or full chapter names, and than hyperlink those chapter names manualy using some pdf editor.

How to create an interactive (hyperlinked) table of contents for a PDF.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IR7FT3Pr4a0

"Chapter numbers" from what? There aren't any chapters, typically, on a website. I guess he could use URLs as chapter "titles."

Hitch

[Marinolino]

Originally Posted by Hitch

"Chapter numbers" from what? There aren't any chapters, typically, on a website. I guess he could use URLs as chapter "titles."

Hitch

He should pass through the whole pdf and write down the corresponding page numbers (of every chapter title).

He can then use those numbers for hyperlinking the TOC page or for linking the bookmarks.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Marinolino

He should pass through the whole pdf and write down the corresponding page numbers (of every chapter title).

He can then use those numbers for hyperlinking the TOC page or for linking the bookmarks.

Well, if he's going to do that, he might as well use Acrobat or an equivalent and just make the links as he goes, right?

Why write down "page numbers" and then go through all the gyrations to build a TOC therewith? If he's got to page through the damned thing, to find the page numbers for the entries he wants, it's just as fast to add the links--hell, faster--than to write down the page numbers, add those to this hypothetical TOC and then run whatever CL program to add links to them. Right?

I must be missing something in this thread. That, or I'm losing my mind. Not sure which, yet.

Hitch

[Marinolino]

Originally Posted by nlundberg

Hi,

I would like to create a toc on a PDF (converted from DJVU). Just a simple one to jump to chapters in a 1000+ pages book.

If original djvu file has already got TOC bookmarks (or if we can use some djvu tool to create bookmarked TOC), we can then use HandyOutliner app for copying bookmarks from original djvu into the converted pdf; as well as from original pdf into converted pdf or from txt file containing bookmarks.

https://www.softpedia.com/get/Office...DjVu-PDF.shtml

[nlundberg]

Hi,

thanks for all the input! I have now managed to make a simple TOC through k2pdfopt.

I extracted another books TOC and used it as a template. Then I copied my book table of content pages to a text document, compared the pdf document pages with the book page numbers, and adjusted the chapter page numbers according to this offset.

This worked well as to understand how it can be done, and gave me a basic way to navigate the book on my e-reader. Since I do not have a workflow it was also very time consuming.

If there is a tutorial or guide on a good workflow for making a toc it would be great to read it.

I do not think hyperlinking will work well on my cybook hd frontlight.

I am reading and converting from many sources: djvu, epub, pdf, and web content.

Thanks!