Non-<hn> tag in TOC: complement to sigil_not_in_toc

jcsalomon · 03-28-2017, 02:57 PM

A series of books I’m typesetting each begin with a sort of one-sentence “Once upon a time…” preface. Since the dead-tree version had this formatted similar to headings, I coded the prefaces thus:

Code:

<body>
  <h2 title="Preface">Once there was a world [text elided]…</h2>
</body>

Trouble is, Amazon decided to reset the start-reading location to the next page, Chapter 1, probably because that had the first text in <p> tags.

My thought is to recode the preface as specially-styled text, something like

Code:

<body>
  <p class="preface" title="Preface">Once there was a world [text elided]…</p>
</body>

where p.preface is styled in CSS the same as h2. But of course this breaks Sigil’s header-identifier code for (re)building the Table of Contents.

What’s the best path forward? Is it better to include an empty

Code:

<h1  title="Preface"></h1>

tag for this, or is there a complement to sigil_not_in_toc that will cause Sigil to recognize a non-hn element as belonging in the TOC?

DiapDealer · 03-28-2017, 03:26 PM

First off... the reason Amazon reset your start point may have nothing to do with this. They typically change the start point to the first "normal" page of text following the ToC. And there's plenty of other super-secret criteria they use, as well it seems. Point being: They're going to start your book where they want your book to start some times.

That said ...

I'm not entirely following the question. You WANT the entry to be in the ToC, in seems, but why exactly do you not want to use the "title" attribute to set the ToC text?

Notjohn · 03-28-2017, 03:40 PM

Amazon seems to have a policy of ignoring prefaces, forewords, acknowledgements, indeed anything that in a traditionally designed book would have "front matter" paginated in lower case roman numerals. I think you would do best to call it something other than "preface" -- say "Marker" or "A Thought" -- in the H heading, followed by your epigram in a conventional paragraph.

I have had pretty good luck uploading epubs to the KDP that have no "text" semantic (SRL) at all. Most such books open at the cover rather than at page one, chapter one.

DiapDealer · 03-28-2017, 03:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Notjohn

Amazon seems to have a policy of ignoring prefaces, forewords, acknowledgements, indeed anything that in a traditionally designed book would have "front matter" paginated in lower case roman numerals. I think you would do best to call it something other than "preface" -- say "Marker" or "A Thought" -- in the H heading, followed by your epigram in a conventional paragraph.

I have had pretty good luck uploading epubs to the KDP that have no "text" semantic (SRL) at all. Most such books open at the cover rather than at page one, chapter one.

Please don't make this a discussion about Amazon's start-point allocation algorithm (which is decidedly "not Sigil-related"). I'm trying to ascertain what is being asked of Sigil specifically.

JSWolf · 03-28-2017, 04:42 PM

This thread has nothing to do with Sigil.

DiapDealer · 03-28-2017, 05:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JSWolf

This thread has nothing to do with Sigil.

I will be the judge of that, Jon. And I don't agree with you.

The question asked as to whether there is a complementary class name like "sigil_not_in_toc" that can be used to cause non-header tags to be included in TOC generation is certainly relevant to Sigil. The answer is no, but this is definitely the right place to ask such a question.

@jcsalomon: There's nothing like that for auto TOC generation, but you can use the TOC editor (after the TOC is generated) to manually add a non-header tag entry to the TOC. You'd have to remember to re-add it if you ever re-generated the TOC, but it's possible to achieve.

theducks · 03-28-2017, 06:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JSWolf

This thread has nothing to do with Sigil.

It is a Sigil topic because the real discussion is making Sigil's TOC tool recognize title= regardless if it is used with a H# tag

Amazon is just the cause for needing this work around

jcsalomon · 03-28-2017, 08:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I'm not entirely following the question. You WANT the entry to be in the ToC, in seems, but why exactly do you not want to use the "title" attribute to set the ToC text?

Oh, I’d be very glad to set the ToC text with the "title" attribute; what I’m trying to avoid is non-semantic use of <h1> tags.

(Or an empty <h1 title="Preface"></h1> set; I could be misunderstanding what I’m reading, but it seems leaving the element empty might have bad effects, though I’ve not seen this in my own testing.)

Quote:

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

The question asked as to whether there is a complementary class name like "sigil_not_in_toc" that can be used to cause non-header tags to be included in TOC generation is certainly relevant to Sigil. The answer is no […].

@jcsalomon: There's nothing like that for auto TOC generation, but you can use the TOC editor (after the TOC is generated) to manually add a non-header tag entry to the TOC. You'd have to remember to re-add it if you ever re-generated the TOC, but it's possible to achieve.

Thanks. This is obscure enough that I won’t ask for such a feature to be added (and I’ll ask elsewhere in the forums about the semantically best way to indicate this), but I’d have used it if the feature was already there.

Tex2002ans · 03-28-2017, 10:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

The question asked as to whether there is a complementary class name like "sigil_not_in_toc" that can be used to cause non-header tags to be included in TOC generation is certainly relevant to Sigil. The answer is no, but this is definitely the right place to ask such a question.

Maybe a class "sigil_in_toc" or "sigil_include_in_toc"?

In HTML5, it seems like the title attribute is now allowable in any tag (XHTML1.1 + HTML 4.01 allowed a subset):

https://www.w3schools.com/tags/att_global_title.asp

although its overuse may interfere with accessibility:

https://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/2...use-and-abuse/
https://www.w3.org/TR/html/dom.html#the-title-attribute

Maybe non-<h#> could only be included in Sigil's auto-TOC if you use a combination of both a specific sigil class + title:

Code:

<p><span class="sigil_include_in_toc" title="Monetary Theory">Monetary Theory.</span> Monetary theory in the 1860s was reliant upon [...]</p>

Quote:

Originally Posted by jcsalomon

Thanks. This is obscure enough that I won’t ask for such a feature to be added (and I’ll ask elsewhere in the forums about the semantically best way to indicate this), but I’d have used it if the feature was already there.

Hmmmm... do you have a screenshot of how it looks in the original book? You may be able to change the display of the <h2> headings slightly while still getting the point across (maybe using a float?).

I would still lean heavily towards the solutions using <h#> tags for chapter titles.

Side Note: There was only a handful of books I worked on that I can recall which had sidebar/inline headings... I discussed one at length years ago in the topic, "A better workflow":

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...96#post3029896

although in my specific case they were slightly superfluous subheadings and not actual main chapter titles (so it didn't matter too much that I used <span> instead of <h3>).

Luckily the book has been retypeset many times over the years, so you can see multiple ways different typographers tackled the same issue:

Original Publication (1941): Attachment 134015
My Sidebar EPUB: Attachment 134016
My Inline EPUB: Attachment 134017
Routledge (2008):

Click image for larger version

Name: Routledge2008Hayek.png
Views: 233
Size: 122.0 KB
ID: 155855

Some later printings even removed the subheadings entirely (I would have to go hunting through my files for comparison images).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Notjohn

Amazon seems to have a policy of ignoring prefaces, forewords, acknowledgements, indeed anything that in a traditionally designed book would have "front matter" paginated in lower case roman numerals. I think you would do best to call it something other than "preface" -- say "Marker" or "A Thought" -- in the H heading, followed by your epigram in a conventional paragraph.

I agree. Amazon's backend probably looks specifically for a set of keywords like "Preface" so it can avoid placing the SRL there.

jcsalomon · 03-30-2017, 12:05 PM

I’m definitely using <h#> for chapter titles; just trying to avoid this for the epigram/preface. (And I’ve opened a thread for discussion of the best way to accomplish that: Workshop › Empty <h1></h1> for ToC target?.)

03-28-2017, 02:57 PM	#1
jcsalomon Zealot Posts: 100 Karma: 1204 Join Date: Jun 2012 Device: Bookari (née Mantano Reader) on Android; Kindle Fire HD	Non-<hn> tag in TOC: complement to sigil_not_in_toc A series of books I’m typesetting each begin with a sort of one-sentence “Once upon a time…” preface. Since the dead-tree version had this formatted similar to headings, I coded the prefaces thus: Code: <body> <h2 title="Preface">Once there was a world [text elided]…</h2> </body> Trouble is, Amazon decided to reset the start-reading location to the next page, Chapter 1, probably because that had the first text in <p> tags. My thought is to recode the preface as specially-styled text, something like Code: <body> <p class="preface" title="Preface">Once there was a world [text elided]…</p> </body> where p.preface is styled in CSS the same as h2. But of course this breaks Sigil’s header-identifier code for (re)building the Table of Contents. What’s the best path forward? Is it better to include an empty Code: <h1 title="Preface"></h1> tag for this, or is there a complement to sigil_not_in_toc that will cause Sigil to recognize a non-hn element as belonging in the TOC?

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03-28-2017, 03:26 PM	#2
DiapDealer Grand Sorcerer Posts: 27,548 Karma: 193191846 Join Date: Jan 2010 Device: Nexus 7, Kindle Fire HD	First off... the reason Amazon reset your start point may have nothing to do with this. They typically change the start point to the first "normal" page of text following the ToC. And there's plenty of other super-secret criteria they use, as well it seems. Point being: They're going to start your book where they want your book to start some times. That said ... I'm not entirely following the question. You WANT the entry to be in the ToC, in seems, but why exactly do you not want to use the "title" attribute to set the ToC text?

03-28-2017, 03:40 PM	#3
Notjohn mostly an observer Posts: 1,515 Karma: 987654 Join Date: Dec 2012 Device: Kindle	Amazon seems to have a policy of ignoring prefaces, forewords, acknowledgements, indeed anything that in a traditionally designed book would have "front matter" paginated in lower case roman numerals. I think you would do best to call it something other than "preface" -- say "Marker" or "A Thought" -- in the H heading, followed by your epigram in a conventional paragraph. I have had pretty good luck uploading epubs to the KDP that have no "text" semantic (SRL) at all. Most such books open at the cover rather than at page one, chapter one.

03-28-2017, 04:42 PM	#5
JSWolf Resident Curmudgeon Posts: 73,962 Karma: 128903250 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Roslindale, Massachusetts Device: Kobo Libra 2, Kobo Aura H2O, PRS-650, PRS-T1, nook STR, PW3	This thread has nothing to do with Sigil.

03-30-2017, 12:05 PM	#10
jcsalomon Zealot Posts: 100 Karma: 1204 Join Date: Jun 2012 Device: Bookari (née Mantano Reader) on Android; Kindle Fire HD	I’m definitely using <h#> for chapter titles; just trying to avoid this for the epigram/preface. (And I’ve opened a thread for discussion of the best way to accomplish that: Workshop › Empty <h1></h1> for ToC target?.)