"Distributed" Table of Contents

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GarryP

Hello everyone.

I've been doing a little experimenting with the Table of Contents feature and have come up with a way of having a "distributed"-style table of contents as opposed to the normal textual list.

/*
Caution: This technique is not for absolute novices.
Please read the available help/wiki pages on "Table of Contents" first.
*/

It takes some setting up and is a bit complicated the first time round but it might be interesting to some people and might give others ideas about how make improvements. (You will need to know your way around Scribus as I won't be giving a full blow-by-blow description, just a quick overview.)

I've attached two files:
* A ZIP file containing an SLA and two image files ("Collected for Output").
* A PDF generated from the SLA.

The PDF doesn't look like much in its basic form but hopefully the more creative people out there will see the sort of thing that is possible. (Experimenting with the SLA is probably a better way of looking at it.)

The PDF shows the effect and I'll briefly(?!) tell you how to re-create what I did. The names I've used in [brackets] can be whatever you want - but I recommend having a "numbering/lettering system" - and the settings in {curly braces} are just what I used, you can use your own.

1. Create a new paragraph style [in the SLA called GTOC_Style]. Make it a large font size with outlined text {white fill, black outline, 3% outline size}.
2. Create two new text frames and give them names [GTOC_1 and GTOC_2].
3. Create two new "Document Item Attributes" [GTOC1 and GTOC2].
4. Create two new "Table of Contents" [GTOC_A and GTOC_B]. Give [GTOC_A] the following settings {Attribute=GTOC1, destination=GTOC_1, placement=Beginning, style=GTOC_Style} and for [GTOC_B]: {Attribute=GTOC2, destination=GTOC_2, placement=Beginning, style=GTOC_Style}.
5. Create a text frame (for the first article) on a new page and give it an attribute [GTOC1]. Then another (for a different article) on another new page with attribute [GTOC2].
6. Add some image frames below the TOC text frames (from step 2) and add images.
7. Generate the table of contents.

You should see each image "numbered" by the page its related article is on. Moving an article to a different page and regenerating the TOC will show the page number as changed.

You can play around with different style settings for the TOC numbers and see what works for you.

You can add more "distributed" TOCs by duplicating what you did for [GTOC_2], [GTOC2], [GTOC_B] and adding more article text frames (with attributes) and image frames.

Essentially you are creating a different TOC for each article. I know this looks over-complicated but I really couldn't find a better way of doing it and once you've done it yourself you'll see that it's not massively difficult to do again. (If someone has a better way of doing this I'd love to know for my own projects.)

Anyway, after all that I hope it gives some people a bit of inspiration for doing something similar in their own projects.

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