mailing-list for TeXmacs Users

[David Allouche <address@hidden>]

On Wed, Jan 28, 2004 at 10:16:07AM +0100, Javier Arántegui Jiménez wrote:
> I have been able to solve the first of them quite easily. The problem was 
> that 
> when I updated the TOC some of the entries got a question mark instead of a 
> page number. I thought that it was a bug but I didn't say anything becuase 
> I 
> was in the middle of the writing processing, so the TOC was not an urgent 
> need. But, what drove me crazy was that sometimes all the entries had page 
> number. No problem at all. After some tries I got the solution: Before 
> update 
> the TOC, you should preview the document (Print-Preview whit ghostscript). 
> Probably everybody but me knew that, but I wanted to share it with you.

That is pretty much a FAQ these days.

The labels are only associated to page numbers when the document is
paginated. When editing a document, one generally uses the "papyrus"
media type, which does not use page breaking, so the page references are
_not_ updated.

To make it even more confusing, the page numbers are cached
inside a special metadata section when you save the document to disk.
So you only need to use page media type _once_ and save your document
and you will get page numbers everywhere, but some of them may get
outdated.

Exporting to PostScript (or previewing) actually sets "page" media type
once internally so the document in properly paginated before conversion.
That will cause the page numbers to appear.

However, you should be aware that updating the page numbers _might_
change some line breaks and that _can_ change the page references.
That's the reason the table of contents should generally be updated
twice if you want to be certain it will get correct references.

If there is popular demand, I can add this to the FAQ.

> The second problem is the following. After the TOC and before the Prologue 
> I 
> have inserted an Abstract. There is no problem, but the Absctract is not 
> shown in the TOC. How can the Absctract be shown in the TOC? Do I miss 
> anything?

Getting custom TOCs is currently a major PITA. If you _really_ want to
know about it, you can search some mailing list archives (I remember
writing message on that topic) and try to understand the way the
SECTION macro is defined. The trick is to use the WRITE primitive. An
important keyword for your search may be "auxiliary buffer".

As a sidenote, I am considering to turn the generation of automatic
content upside down. The WRITE primitive and auxilliary buffer handling
is pretty much an intellectual legacy from TeX. I think it would be much
more flexible and convenient to just generate automatic content from
Scheme. That could be an application of the "satellites" work around
proclus.

I'd like a statement from Joris as to whether such a change would be
included in mainline? Or would I have to keep it in my personal branch?

-- 
                                                            -- ddaa