TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Subject:Re: FrameMaker and Table of Contents- HELP!! From:David Chisma <chisma -at- C031 -dot- AONE -dot- NET -dot- AU> Date:Sat, 8 Aug 1998 09:59:42 +1000
Dave Chisma wrote:
It depends on whether you're creating a new document style or creating a
document based on a previously-used style.
Here's how it works (I'll use a TOC as an example). Say you've got a
FrameMaker document (we'll call it xxx.FM) and you generate a TOC.
FrameMaker looks for a file called xxxTOC.FM, upon which it will base
the formatting of the TOC. If 'xxxTOC.FM' doen not exist, FrameMaker
will make one?with all entries in the default parapgraph style.
The first time you create a TOC for a particular document it will have
no styles applied. However, if your new document is based on a document
style that was used elsewhere, and that document style has a TOC that
you would like to use, there are two ways:
1. Before you generate your TOC, copy the other TOC into the same
location as xxx.FM and re-name the copy 'xxxTOC.FM'. Then, when you
generate your TOC, FrameMaker will base the formatting of the TOC on the
renamed copy (over-writing the copied file in the process).
2. Generate your TOC and import the styles from another TOC. Save your
file, then regenerate it.
If you are starting from scratch (and have no 'xxxTOC.FM styles to copy)
you'll need to define the styles in the TOC (Heading1TOC, Heading2TOC,
... paragraph tags). Or you might check you the templates provided by
Adobe. On my PC, there's one in the FrameMaker tempates folder
(C:\Program Files\Adobe\FrameMaker5.5\Templates\Book\TOC.fm).
The first time you go through this process it seems a bit scary. On the
other hand, you only need to do it once for a particular style of
document and then you just need to keep re-cycling the style (possible
with minor adjustments as you go).
Cheers, Dave Chisma
chisma -at- c031 -dot- aone -dot- net -dot- au
Heather Stehney wrote:
> I searched the archives, but was unable to find an answer to the
> following:
>
> Is there a way to automatically format a generated Table of Contents
> list in
> FrameMaker? I'm looking for a feature that is comparable to Word's
> TOC
> automatic formatting abilities. Can you please tell me about the
> process
> that you use to format Table of Contents and Index files?
