I can't get the page numbers in my table of contents to update when I update the book.

[stummeay]

I'm using Framemaker 11 and I have two TOCs in my book: one in English and one in French. Each TOC links to different documents in the same book. The reference page for each TOC is set and correctly displays the heading 1 and 2 I've told it to display, but the numbers do not update when the content in my document files changes to a different page. I've checked the conditional text settings in my document files; they are correct. When I update the book, I choose to update Numbering, All Cross-References, All Text Insets, OLE Links, Generate Table of Contents, Lists, and Indexes. What am I doing wrong? Thanks.

[Arnis_Gubins]

Do both TOCs show as generated files in the Book window, i.e. they're a reversed colour from the standard .fm files?

How did you add both TOCs to the book file?

[stummeay]

They are not a reversed color from my regular .fm files. I'm guessing they should be?

To add them the English, I had my book open and did Add Table of Contents and selected Headings 1 and 2 to show. I formatted the Reference page to define the look of the TOC. (Sometimes I copy formats from another TOC. I copy Paragraph Formats, Page Layout, Document Properties, and Reference Pages, and I check the box to Delete Other Format / Overrides.)

For the French TOC, I made a new book, did Add Table of Contents, formatted it, saved it as a new name, and added that file to my book. If I don't do it in a separate book (which I then delete), it picks up all Headings 1 and 2, including the English ones, which I don't want.

Thank you for helping me figure this out.

[Bob_Niland]

re: ... and added that [TOC] file to my book.

That won't work. FM won't recognize it as generated, and Update Book won't update it. You need to do an Add > TOC, then edit the formats of that TOC (copying them in from the non-working TOC should suffice).

[Arnis_Gubins · Accepted solution]

If they're not reversed, then they are definitely not generated files. See the example from the FM11 Help: http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FrameMaker/11.0/Using/images/bk_hier_books.png

The "K" item is a TOC file that FM recognizes a generated file.

Since you created your French TOC using another book structure, you could import by Reference this TOC file into another FM file (i.e. create a Text inset) in the main book that you want. However, you would need to do updates in two steps. First update the French book to revise that TOC. Then update the main book to get the rest of the pages correct (and since the french TOC is imported by Reference, FM will always use the latest version).

[stummeay]

Again, thanks for the input on this...I'm getting it worked out.

I didn't really know what you meant, Arnis, about importing the French file by reference), so I tried something else: I added two TOCs to my one book that has both English and French in it. Both appear to generate and update correctly, as they are both the reversed type of TOC file you mentioned. The only trouble is that both TOCs contain English and French, since I generated Headings 1 and 2, which are in both languages. So I'm thinking maybe if I change my Headings 1 and 2 in my Paragraph Designer to Heading 1 Eng and Heading 1 Fre and reassign them in my document files, that should work. Is that a logical way to go about it? We can have up to 18 languages in one book, all of which need their own TOC, so it might be a big job to do that for every language. If that doesn't seem like a good way to go about it, please tell me more about importing by reference.

Thank you again.

[stummeay]

And another related question: why does my workspace change (my Paragraph and Character Designers and other pods disappear) every time I generate a TOC? Each time I have to do a Reset Workspace to my saved space. Not a huge deal because Reset Workspace fixes it, but I'm just wondering if there's a way to not have to do that. Thanks.

[Arnis_Gubins]

Check your Edit > Preference > Interface setting for Pods. You may have them set to Hide on Close or Auto-collapse.

FYI, a text inset allows you to import a FM (or other word-processing) file into an existing FM document, see: Adobe FrameMaker 11 * Import text. If you import this by Reference, then FM establishes a link and will always import the latest version of the file when you open that FM document. You could create a container file for your TOCs and then import the language specific TOCs from the various language books as required (I'm assuming that you have the various languages in separate files, rather than all in a single one).

[stummeay]

I will have to look into the text inset thing tomorrow. I did discover something new...wondering if you know anything about it.

I took my book that had English and French files in it and saved it to new books: one English, one French. I kept only the language-specific files in each book, including a working TOC. I then added those books into a third book. That third book had a front cover, the English book, the French book, and a back cover. It generated a complete book with both languages, but it simply didn't include the TOCs! Have any clue about that? Thanks.

[Arnis_Gubins]

When you have FM books within a book (child books), then the lower level generated files (TOC, Index, List of....) are not updated with a top-level update. You need to work from the bottom up, i.e. update each sub-book first. See: Adobe FrameMaker 11 * Create books

[stummeay]

I did that. My child books have working TOCs in them. I had my two child books open, updated them, and double checked that my TOCs updated. They did. Then I updated my parent book and saved it as a PDF. The two child books showed up in my PDF, correctly numbered, but the TOCs were not in the PDF. What did I miss? Thanks.

[stummeay]

Arnis, Looks like we're working on this with the same third party, Rick Quatro, via the Frameusers list. I appreciate everyone's help.

[Arnis_Gubins]

I just tested this out and saw the same result as Rick - a book with child books ignores all generated files within the child books. This applies to adding content from them (e.g. their titles) to actually including them in the output. This applies to all versions of FM since v.9!

However, there is a workaround for this. You need to use the hierarchical book structure in the parent book and create Folders for each book that you want to add. Then manually add the generated files (TOC, IX, List of..., etc.) and book to the respective folder. This is what it looks like for two child books in a parent book:

Note that the child book generated files (TOC, IOR) show as just regular files at this point in the parent book. To get the page numbering to be continuous throughout the parent book, you will need to make a couple of passes. First set folder, files and books to have the Numbering continue from the previous (if you want all sequential page numbers). This will set the page numbers correctly except for what they were in the respective book TOCs. You will need to use the starting page number of the child TOC files in each folder (it shows in the Book status bar when click on the TOC file in the master/parent book).

To set the individual book TOCs to be correct in the parent book, open the child book and set the TOC Numbering to start at the page stated in the parent book (status bar). Now update the child book to set the correct (parent book) page numbers in the child TOC. [This is a necessary manual step, as the page number assigned in the parent book is ignored when th child book is individually updated and FM uses 1 to start off the sequence in the child book.]  Repeat for each child book in the master/parent book.

The final step is to Update the parent book and create the PDF. You should now have all of the files included in the PDF and the child TOCs should show the correct page numbers of the master book.

This whole process of books within books seems a bit borked and one shouldn't have to be jumping through hoops to include child generated files. Please report this as a bug via: https://bugbase.adobe.com/index.cfm

[stummeay]

It worked! THANK YOU!

I didn't have to do all of the steps for getting page numbering to come out correctly since I need each language to start on page 1, after its unnumbered TOC. So I simply had a TOC in each language's child book, added those to the parent book (in folders), and it worked perfectly. Seems the folders are the key. Not sure why, but if that's the way to do it, I'm good with that.

Now the only thing I still have to figure out is how to set a line length for TOC entries so they move to a second line instead of running into the page number (I have a narrow, two-column layout). I assume it's in my Reference Pages for the TOC, but I haven't had a chance to play with it yet. Do you have any experience with that? I understand there's a plug-in called TocBreaker that also may be able to help.

Again, thank you.

[Arnis_Gubins]

Glad it worked out, but it's a lot more work than should be required. The documentation for this in the Help file is a tad misleading and totally omits (or perhaps it's a bug) mentioning that all generated files are completely by-passed in child books.

Regarding setting an automatic line break in the TOC so the text doesn't wrap out to the page number, there is a trick that can be done with the Paragraph Designer. I'm assuming that you're trying to workaround a situation in the TOC that looks something like this:

where some of the lines run right up to the page number location and look awful.

If you set the Word Spacing Minimum value (found on the Advanced tab of the Paragraph Designer) to be greater than the Maximum value (counter-intuitive), then FM will wrap a line before the end [it's some function of the ratio of the min to max). A good starting point is to make the min about twice the max value, e.g.

The TOC will then look something like this:

You'll have to experiment as to what min/max values give you an optimum location for the wrap, as it will depend upon the font used and its size. You may need to set different values for each TOC paratag to get a consistent look for the wraps.

[stummeay]

Thank you. I will give that a try shortly.

I just found an issue with the whole book thing. I'm getting a postscripting error now that I wasn't getting before. This type of error usually involves an image, but everything seems fine. So I set the book up the old way and it works fine. Strange. Here's the error:

I also get a book error about inconsistent conditional text settings that I don't get when I do it "the old way." ??? Any insight you have on this is GREATLY appreciated. Thank you!

[Arnis_Gubins]

That error shows that FM couldn't make a link to an object. Try setting the Create Named Destinations for All Paragraphs on the Links tab of your PDF Setup.

The inconsistent conditional setting means that at least one of the files in the book doesn't have all of the conditions set the same as the files preceding it in the book order. Just set the conditions at the Book level and they will be applied to all files in the book.