TOC in Book Designer

[cirocco]

Hello,
I have just recently purchased Sony Reader and I am trying to convert some novels in Book Designer (05/30/07 update).
I am confused about what is included in TOC (I mean "Table of Contents" in book menu on the reader). To test it I created a simple test case (in bd format) with few titles with subtitles, and some of the subtitles are included in TOC and some are not included...
Can I somehow fully control what is included in TOC in reader?

[tehashi]

Originally Posted by cirocco

Hello,
I have just recently purchased Sony Reader and I am trying to convert some novels in Book Designer (05/30/07 update).
I am confused about what is included in TOC (I mean "Table of Contents" in book menu on the reader). To test it I created a simple test case (in bd format) with few titles with subtitles, and some of the subtitles are included in TOC and some are not included...
Can I somehow fully control what is included in TOC in reader?

Well in my experiance making TOC's can be infuriating (like in trying to get the file you included to work ), yet doable.
The biggest thing to make sure of is that the lines you want as a title are marked as such. I have had several books where the 'title' was bolded and centered so i thought it was correct but once centered i found it was not formatted as a title. So make sure each of them says 'title' in the bottom right of BD when selected.
Sometimes if you still have trouble i recommend removing all the formatting of the text and area around it and starting over. Remove extra returns or spaces and such, and also make sure that the text above or below is not including the title in its formatting. When you double click on what you want as a title if it selects too much extra stuff then definitely delete unwanted pieces and try again.
When i tried you sample file all i was able to get (even after messing with it) is 'title 1' in the TOC. I am not sure why, maybe ack of text or something but i am not sure. I do know that i usually leave the default setting for TOC in the Make Sony Reader File dialog box, so you may want to make sure that has not been changed too much. (mine is set with TOC checked and set to short, fyi)

I know what i said is pretty basic but i hope i helped a little, if not then someone with more experience than i might post soon.

[Patricia]

Also try using the Element Browser to see that all your titles are actually marked as titles.
BD does not like short chapters and sometimes tries to ignore them. After you have made all the titles try using the 'insert all page breaks' command (- in the format menu, then under 'more transformations'). A page break should show up immediately before each chapter. If it doesn't, then highlight the preceding paragraph or two and add a page break. This usually works and causes the chapters to show up in the TOC.
But with very short chapters (eg poems a couple of lines long) I have been known to add a picture, purely to make them longer.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

I've had the same issues with BD as you describe... it's touchy, and when importing from apps like Word (even touchier), you often get wonky formatting.

When I create a file (usually in Word), I take care to use standard formatting for the document, text for standard text body, Heading 1 for each title, etc. I also try to make sure Word is handling line breaks and paragraphs the same throughout the document. Often, Word messes these up, though it isn't always obvious, and these messed up formats cause BD formatting to come out wrong. The more effort you put into properly setting up the document before you import it (in whatever original file you're working in), the better your BD file will be.

I've had success both by removing formatting in BD, then highlighting the desired text and clicking the "Title" button to set it... OR, opening the HTML window for a particular section, and manually rewriting the tags (not hard, if you know HTML at all).

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by cirocco

Hello,
I have just recently purchased Sony Reader and I am trying to convert some novels in Book Designer (05/30/07 update).

Before playing around with BD, please get the 07/30/2007 update. It's more stable. So if there are any gotchas, they might possibly be in the 05/30/2007 version as that one does have some gotchas.