Tweaking the TOC formatting

Incomplete TOC formatting
Possible measures against these effects

Incomplete TOC formatting

When formatting the Table Of Contents FrameMaker not always behaves as expected:

The line is just long enough to make the page number overflow to the next line. The TAB is already 'used' for the leader, hence the leader dots are not repeated in the next line.

The strange thing, however is, that even an additional TAB in the generating pattern in the reference page does not help in all cases. You can test that by manually inserting a TAB character in the TOC entry.

Possible measures against these effects

Of course inserting a line break can fix the problem – but only until the next generation of the TOC from the source paragraphs. Hence the goal is to find a solution in the source paragraphs (headings).

1. Add a non-breaking space to the line that is 'just a little bit to short to break'
2. Add a second (or even third) TAB to the generating pattern of the TOC entry in the reference page
3. Keep words together with non-breaking space to force a new line
4. Reword the heading to get rid of the problem

Elongating the text

Watch the additional nonbreaking spaces in the first and second line of this entry. The rewording was just a little bit to short. It was also necessary to insert a single blank after the two non-breaking spaces to force the TAB to execute.

Shorten the text

Shortening the text normally is the best cure – if this is really possible...

Use a plug-in

The ITL FrameScript DocToc gives the additional benefit of formatting also the entries in a standard FrameMaker TOC file. Of course this must be initated – it does not start automatically when generating the TOC.