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I've run into this issue in a couple different contexts (at my current gig and a previous gig). (It's totally plausible in reference material where a parameter or method (topic) is applicable in different contexts (chapters) as well as in procedural material where steps are similar in parallel-but-different chapters.)
I agree with Robert, that it's OK to disambiguate in the heading without changing all the other parallel headings, if you have otherwise weighed your options. I would think that in many cases, a parenthetical at the end of the heading would be minimally disruptive to the reader skimming the TOC.
(And yes, the delivery method would add an "it depends" to the mix. Confluence, for example, won't let you name two pages in the same space with the same name.)
FWIW,
Sharon
On Tue, Dec 1, 2015 at 2:41 PM, Monique Semp <monique -dot- semp -at- earthlink -dot- net>
wrote:
> Hello, WR-L-ers,
>
> Iâve ended up with two chapters that both have a heading1, â<topic-name>â.
> It really is the correct name for both instances, within the context
> of their respective chapters.
>
> But somehow it just doesnât seem quite right to do this. (Iâve just
> added an xref in the first chapter to the same-named heading1 section
> in another chapter, which is what made me wonder about the wisdom of
> my chosen
> heading1 titles.) So I thought Iâd query the hive to find out your thoughts?
>
> I could see the answer varying depending on the delivery method. In
> this case itâs a FrameMaker-authored PDF doc. It will (never?) be
> delivered as HTML, so no chance of conflicting URL page names. And
> internal xrefs (which are live hyperlinks in the PDF) always have a
> page number included, so thereâs no chance of the user ending up in the wrong section.
>
> I could of course make the headings have longer text to provide
> context, but then for parallelism Iâd want to rename the other
> chaptersâ topics (which by chance do not repeat). The result would be
> excessive wordiness and a much harder to scan/comprehend ToC.
>
> Thoughts?
> -Monique
>
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