TOC formatting

[canine]

Hi all,

I have been clearing up the html mess produced by Scrivener in my ePub 3 file.

A staggering amount of spurious code - too much to cover here.

All has been going well with Sigil.

I have encountered an issue with my TOC. I had generated it in Sigil - results were OK.

I further edited my document and regenerated the TOC - it now looks horrible. The TOC now shows each entry with either a number, or next level with letters or multiple letters e.g aa, ab, ac - looks awful. The first time I generated the TOC - it just showed the headings - now I have this mess of ugly formatted lists.

How do I get rid of all the numbering and letters in the TOC? I just want the headings showing (this had been the case - no idea why Sigil has created such an ugly mess.

Cheers,

Mike

[KevinH]

Sigil only ever builds its toc from the contents of the heading tags h1, h2, h3, etc.
So whatever you have done has changed the contents of those tags in some way. If you want to override a heading tag you can set a different string in that tag's title attribute. This can be made easier using the TOC Editor.

Without specific examples of changes to those tags and to the resulting toc, there is no way to help.

[roland1]

I'm just learning SIGIL so I encountered that issue as well.

You have to go to the tools/table of contents/generate table of contents interface.

And there you have to uncheck the "show TOC ....only" box and it will give you an overview of what's been checked and what hasn't. This should give you an idea of what you need to uncheck to clean up your mess.

It takes a while to figure out what's going on with SIGIL. Like most programs, it has a mind of its own. I've been at it for 12 days. Getting used to it.

Also, I only use H1 headings for my TOC. If you were to add subheadings, I would go with H2. In that way, you can also use the select menu to focus only on those two types of tags. Again, you have to get used to looking at SIGIL and what it's trying to do.

This is based on my experience. Hence, it's not SIGIL law.

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by canine

[...] I further edited my document and regenerated the TOC - it now looks horrible. The TOC now shows each entry with either a number, or next level with letters or multiple letters e.g aa, ab, ac - looks awful. The first time I generated the TOC - it just showed the headings - now I have this mess of ugly formatted lists.

Can you take a screenshot of this?

Originally Posted by canine

I have been clearing up the html mess produced by Scrivener in my ePub 3 file.

I'm assuming this Scrivener mess infected everything else in the book too.

Sigil's Tools > Table of Contents > Table of Contents generates based on your <h1> -> <h6> tags.

<h1>Part 1</h1>

<h2>Chapter 1. The Beginning</h2>

<h3>Section 1: Waking Up</h3>

[...]

<h1>Part 2</h1>

would create a TOC with:

- Part 1
-- Chapter 1. The Beginning
--- Section 1: Waking Up
- Part 2

Sigil doesn't add any extra numbers or letters nonsense.

Originally Posted by KevinH

Sigil only ever builds its toc from the contents of the heading tags h1, h2, h3, etc.
So whatever you have done has changed the contents of those tags in some way. If you want to override a heading tag you can set a different string in that tag's title attribute. This can be made easier using the TOC Editor.

Yes, like KevinH says, you can manually override what gets written in Sigil's TOC by using title:

<h1 title="P1">Part 1</h1>

which would show up in the TOC as:

- P1

... but it sounds like you have some serious underlying Scrivener issues that have to be dealt with first.

[hobnail]

Expanding on what tex2002ans said, as another example, in the TOC I like to have the word Chapter in front of the chapter's number then a big dash then the chapter's title. So when it's all done my h2 tags look like the following

    <h2 title="Chapter One — The place of Bruntisfield">One <span>The place of Bruntisfield</span></h2>

Then in the book there is no word Chapter, just the One. (For some reason it looks sort of bare not having the word Chapter in the TOC but in the book it seems redundant given that it's at the top of the page at the start of the chapter.) Then a blank line, then the chapter title. Moving the chapter title to its own line is done with some css on the span, specifically the display:block

h2 span, h1 span {
    display: block;
    font-size: larger;
    font-style: italic;
    /* overrides small-caps in 2nd .css file */
    font-variant: normal;
    font-weight: bold;
    margin-top: 1.25em;
}

I have a bunch of search and replaces in sigil's Saved Searches that reformat the chapter titles from what I originally had, h2 contains the chapter number and h3 contains the chapter title.

[canine]

Thank you all.

I dealt with it by stripping out any <ol> and </ol> tags.

Net result - a very nice TOC.

Thanks for everyone's ideas.

Cheers,

Mike

[DiapDealer]

Note that the NAV document in an Epub 3 has certain specifications it needs to follow. Stripping out the ordered list tags may not be the best answer in this case.

Sigil hides the numbering in its automatically generated nav.xhtml using css. namely:

ol {
    list-style-type: none;
}

From your original comments, it sounds to me as if you may have inadvertently deleted either the link to the NAV's css, or deleted some inline styling that Scrivener output.

[luciaisacat]

I have a different question on this same subject; does anyone know if there is a way to alter the default format of the TOC in a specific EPUB file? e.g. is there a way to modify an EPUB file so that Sigil automatically generate a TOC with a different header OR with a different style in the list ?
Thanks you!

[KevinH]

Yes, it was noted earlier in this. Just add a title="your title here" attribute to the h1 tag (or any h* tag) and when Sigil builds the TOC, it will use that title attributes value in place of the contents of the h* tag.

[luciaisacat]

Originally Posted by KevinH

Yes, it was noted earlier in this. Just add a title="your title here" attribute to the h1 tag (or any h* tag) and when Sigil builds the TOC, it will use that title attributes value in place of the contents of the h* tag.

Hi! Many thanks to KevinH for this useful contribution. My question, however, was about if it was possible to change the main default format of the TOC (i.e. the h1 format and wording of the page: "Table of Content (TOC)" and/or the ol list). I know that the page could be edited manualy, but I was exploring whether the default could be edited. Any idea?

[KevinH]

If it is the nav epub3 document, the leave it alone since it must remain fully machine parseable. For the html TOC, you can create it any way you want. If sigil creates it, then you have to edit it to fit what you want. There is no template for an html TOC. You do know you can easily add your own CSS stylesheet changing how things appear.

[luciaisacat]

Originally Posted by KevinH

If it is the nav epub3 document, the leave it alone since it must remain fully machine parseable. For the html TOC, you can create it any way you want. If sigil creates it, then you have to edit it to fit what you want. There is no template for an html TOC. You do know you can easily add your own CSS stylesheet changing how things appear.

Thanks again! Yes, a specific CSS for the nav doc may change many things but not, for example, the wording in the heading ("Table of Content (TOC)"). Anyway, I understand that there is no editable template for that page in Sigil, and, therefore, I rest my case.

[KevinH]

You do understand that the nav document and the html TOC are two different things, right? The nav myst be kept fully machine parseable at all times as it fills the role the epub2 ncx fills. But you can remove the nav from the spine and use a separate html TOC that you fully control to present to the e-reading user. In that you can use and formats or tags you want. That said, using proper heading tags is important for accessibility and screen readers.

If all you want us to change the heading in the h1 tag from "Table of Contents" to something else in the nav, that is safe to do but use of the nav tag, epub:type and proper nesting using ol and li tags can not be removed in the nav.

So you might want to remove the nav from the spine and create an html TOC and modify it to your hearts content.

[luciaisacat]

Originally Posted by KevinH

...
So you might want to remove the nav from the spine and create an html TOC and modify it to your hearts content.

Yes, thanks! this is the current option; I was just exploring if there was a differnt one available, in order to use directly the nav as the TOC page of the ebook. I believe I got my question answered when you told me there is no way to edit the default nav page. Thanks!