Touch Is hierarchical table of contents possible?

[Mekk]

I recently got Kobo Touch after my Sony PRS-650 broke. The most painful change is the way hierarchical table of contents are handled. And there are many books where such ToCs are in use (for good) - for example most O'Reilly-sold epubs.

Yesterday I wanted to refresh my memory on some topic using „SQL Cookbook”. So I opened the book, and opened the table of contents to find the chapter I wanted to read. Kobo Touch displayed … plain list of all table-of-contents items, without any hierarchy. The list claimed having 147 pages (147 pages of table of contents, in 300-page book) and was navigable only back and forth. In practice: there was no way to use it to navigate to proper place in the book.

For comparison, after opening the same book on Sony and going to ToC, I see list of top-level chapters (1-2 pages), after I touch some chapter I see it's sections, after I touch the section I see it's subsections, finally lowest level opens book in the correct place. 3-4 finger touches, a few seconds and I am in the chapter I am interested in.

Do I miss something? Is there a way to get reasonable ToC on Kobo?

[Mekk]

To provide all the details about example: this book table of contents can be seen at http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596009762.do
In .epub the hierarchy is deeper - there are subsections like „Problem”, „Solution”, „Oracle notes”, „DB2 notes”... in every section. Many tech books have similar structure.

So on Sony I see

1 Retrieving Records
2 Sorting Query Results
3 Working with Multiple Tables
4 Inserting, Updating, Deleting
(... up to 14 ...)

expanding chapter 4 gives

Inserting a New Record
Inserting Default Values
Overriding a Default Value with NULL
Copying Rows from One Table into Another
Copying a Table Definition
Inserting into Multiple Tables at Once
Blocking Inserts to Certain Columns
Modifying Records in a Table
(.. and a few more ...)

and so on.

On Kobo I get

1 Retrieving Records
Retrieving All Rows and Columns from a Table
Problem
Solution
Discussion
Retrieving a Subset of Rows from a Table
Problem
Solution
Discussion
Finding Rows That Satisfy Multiple Conditions

(and info that there are over hundred pages of toc)

[robko]

Short version: no, Kobo doesn't support heirarchical TOC.

[Jorg3]

This is something I discovered as well after having purchased my Kobo Glo HD. This really sucks, and I think this is a major drawback of Kobo eReaders that needs to be addressed. I have a good number of books (mainly medical) that have hierarchical ToCs, which are very necessary to navigate the book and get to the specific section you need to read.

[dordale]

I agree it would be nice if Kobos were able to handle hierarchical table of contents. It's not that big of a problem for reading fiction--but for the examples mentioned above it would be critical. Another example--I can't read use my Bible on my Kobo--it's too painful--try finding one of the Psalms! I end up using one of my Kindles or my older Sonys for this.

[girlwithabook]

Originally Posted by Mekk

To provide all the details about example: this book table of contents can be seen at http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596009762.do
In .epub the hierarchy is deeper - there are subsections like „Problem”, „Solution”, „Oracle notes”, „DB2 notes”... in every section. Many tech books have similar structure.

So on Sony I see

1 Retrieving Records
2 Sorting Query Results
3 Working with Multiple Tables
4 Inserting, Updating, Deleting
(... up to 14 ...)

expanding chapter 4 gives

Inserting a New Record
Inserting Default Values
Overriding a Default Value with NULL
Copying Rows from One Table into Another
Copying a Table Definition
Inserting into Multiple Tables at Once
Blocking Inserts to Certain Columns
Modifying Records in a Table
(.. and a few more ...)

and so on.

On Kobo I get

1 Retrieving Records
Retrieving All Rows and Columns from a Table
Problem
Solution
Discussion
Retrieving a Subset of Rows from a Table
Problem
Solution
Discussion
Finding Rows That Satisfy Multiple Conditions

(and info that there are over hundred pages of toc)

I'm seeing something completely different on the same book on my Kobo. I got the file from Kobo directly, but my TOC looks like this for chapter 1:
1. Retrieving Records
1.1 Retrieving All Rows and Columns from a Table
1.2 Retrieving a Subset of Rows from a Table
1.3 Finding Rows That Satisfy Multiple Conditions
etc etc.

Though maybe the file directly from O'Reilly is different. Where did you download the book from?

[GeoffR]

Originally Posted by girlwithabook

Though maybe the file directly from O'Reilly is different. Where did you download the book from?

Or perhaps it is because the post you quoted is three years old, and the publisher has revised the book since then.

[anacreon]

My first two readers were Sonys, and I miss hierarchical TOCS too.

For books with this type of problem, I use Sigil to create a TOC to level 2 or 3 only, to keep the number of pages in the TOC manageable, and navigate within the lowest with the double arrows in the bottom of page contents menu.

If there is a detailed html TOC within the book I mark up its first page (tap top right) to go there quickly and navigate more easily.

Within the TOC called within a book, you can navigate the page number: tap on the current one and insert number (1 to go to the contents for most books in English).