Re: How d'you set the font for Contents and List of Tables?

[Mark Summerfield]

2008/5/30 Jeff Kingston <address@hidden>:
>> (1) Setting the font used for "Contents" and "List of Tables".
>
> There are no options for this, because they are considered to be
> large scale structures like prefaces, introductions, chapters,
> appendices, and indexes, so whatever you get for chapters is what
> you get for these things.  I think that's the right way to go;
> although I accept that a list of tables is a second-class citizen
> compared to the other large-scale things, to set about defining
> an entire suite of options for it seems to be overkill to me.

But while a Chapter is a big thing and deserves a big title, the table
of contents and list of tables are smaller scale things and should be
able to have their fonts set separately.
The problem I have is getting a nice layout to my TOC and list of
tables, and that means I have to fiddle with the interline spacing (to
avoid bad breaks) but can't scale down the size of the title...

>> (2) Setting the line spacing for the List of Tables.
>
> @ContentsGap, @ContentsGapAbove, and @ContentsGap below from the
> User's Guide, Section 2.9 determine the line spacing in both
> "Contents" and "List of Tables" lists.

That is v. frustrating! I fiddle with those to get the TOC to lay out
nicely and didn't realise that was messing up the list of tables as a
side-effect.

>> Also, for the List of Tables, the table numbers are left aligned:
>
> Try fiddling with the @ContentsFormat option, which is in the setup
> files but does not seem to be documented in the User's Guide (I'll
> fix that for the next release).  For example you could try
>
>    @ContentsFormat { 1c @Wide { &1rt number } |2s title }
>
> to right-align the numbers in a one centimetre column, separated by
> two spaces from the title.  Again, though, this format is used by
> both "Contents" and "List of Tables".

OK, thanks, I'll try it.

>> Is there an option to @Table that says "don't include this in the List
>> of Tables"?
>
> No.  Convince me that you need it, and I will add it to the next
> release.  It would be easy to do.

In my Python 3 book I have several tables that are too big for one
page. I never do multipage tables, so for each of these I have two
tables, but obviously I only want the first one of each pair to appear
in the TOC. Also in a couple of places I have tables that don't belong
in the TOC; most of the tables are about Python's syntax or APIs but a
couple are used to describe file formats for an example and just don't
belong in the TOC. (I've worked around by making the file format
tables into Figures, but I can't do that for the second table of pairs
of tables).

Hope you're convinced:-)

Thanks!

-- 
Mark Summerfield, Qtrac Ltd., www.qtrac.eu