Table of Contents - Formatting Problem

[RKanarek]

Greetings,

Please forgive me if I am being redundant, but the following problem (which I may have reported previously) has crossed my path again.

If you exam either of the attached files, you will notice that the page number for the line that starts with “1. PC RS232 Port …” does not appear where it should (i.e., the “2” should be right justified). Instead the "2" spilled over onto the next line, where it lacks both the leading periods and the right justification. The line starting with “1. Direct Link function…” demonstrates how TextMaker should have handled the previous example.

Though I am reporting this as a TOC problem, it may well be a problem with feature that TextMaker has and that the TOC function just happens to use: perhaps, were I to experiment further, I’d find deeper/other problems.* Further, perhaps it is not even a TM problem I have discovered: perhaps there is a problem with the font metrics for the font I am using (DejaVU LGC Serif, TTF version 2.37) that is confusing TM? Anyone have any thoughts?

Cordially,
Richard Kanarek

* Actually I did experiment more, and my results were a bit distressing. Keeping in mind that, due to the way they are configured, altering the “TOC 1” paragraph style alters “TOC 2”’s style, which alters “TOC 3”’s style, etc., changing “TOC 1”’s right indent to ”-0.5 in” and changing its character pitch to 90% causes the text “Delta USB-RS485” to partially run past the right margin. Clearly something isn’t right somewhere.

[SuperTech]

Thanks for posting your problems with the sample files. I have check both your files and found these:

I didn't find this problem in TMDX file and when I exported it to PDF, there is no problem there also. Please update your SoftMaker Office 2021 to the latest revision and check again. I have attached a PDF file copy which I exported.

Please share complete details of the font related problem for better understanding.

Yes, as we can see TOC3 is child of TOC2 and TOC2 is of TOC1 so editing TOC1 will impact TOC2 and TOC3 also. If you don't want such linkage, please create them separately.

Delta Direct Link - Edited by RK - Page 1 ONLY.pdf

(220.2 KiB) Downloaded 407 times

[RKanarek]

Dear Super,

I'm sorry to have taken so long to reply, but I am hardly a carefree man-of-leisure.

I'm (reasonably) sure that the TOC problem has been occurring for some time, and I'm (absolutely) sure I'd like to get it fixed. Let's start from the beginning and build from there.

1. Did you observe that the (textual, not digital) table of contents shown in the PDF is defective?
In particular, the page number for "1. PC RS232 Port to PLC RS232 Port Using a DVPACAB2A30 Cable" appears on the subsequent line, but is not right justified with leader dots.

2. Did you observe that the document properties of the PDF indicate it was generated by an application called "TextMaker"?

If you answered "no" to either question, then we have a problem with the problem. If you answered "yes" to both questions, then we have a problem with TextMaker.

I think the problem is with TextMaker, and I think the problem involves TM mishandling the formatting of TOC text when the text is too long to allow page numbers to appear on the same line as the start of the line, but when the line is also not so long as to cause TextMaker to deliberately/knowingly start a new line for the text. This would explain why the problem occurs infrequently, and why it took even me -- Mr. Anal Retentive -- a while to notice it (though I think I first noticed it years ago).

I also think that, because the dimensions of the text characters one uses effects the length of any given line, the problem will vary depending upon what font/font-substitutions are used.

The problem continues to exist with "TextMaker Professional 2021 (rev S1042.1212) 64bit", and I think it has possibly existed for some few years -- perhaps always.

Kind regards,
Richard Kanarek

[SuperTech]

Did you check the PDF file which I shared in my last post? I don't have any such problem. Please let us know the steps how you created that PDF? Did you use PDF Export option or print to file?

[RKanarek]

Dear Super,

Thanks for your very prompt reply!

No, I confess I did not carefully examine the PDF you posted. I have, however, done so now.

The TOC in your PDF is correctly formatted, however TextMaker, Windoze, or someone/something else made font substitutions such that the PDF you produced does not use the same fonts that I used. (Apparently you don’t have “Dejavu LGC Sans Condensed” and “DejaVu LGC Serif Condensed” [both version 2.37] installed on your computer.) So does the PDF show that there is a problem with the DejaVu fonts I use, or does it show that TextMaker produces improperly formatted TOCs depending upon what font, font sizes, font styles, etc. it encounters? Based upon my testing, it would appear that it is TextMaker that is defective.

This is a PNG image showing the differences between the PDF fonts used in the PDF I generated and the one generated by SuperTech.

As an experiment, I changed the paragraph styles of my original sample document document so that all the TOC paragraph styles now use the Windoze-standard Times New Roman font and all the other paragraph styles use the Windoze-standard Arial font. I made these changes in an attempt to replicate the font substitutions that were preformed on your computer when you produced your version of my original PDF. I did not knowingly make any other changes.

TextMaker seemed to properly format the resulting TOC, just like TextMaker did for you. When I changed the TOC paragraph styles to a Times New Roman font size of 15.1, however, TextMaker again failed to properly format the document.

N.B. Even though TextMaker allows me to change a paragraph style's character font size to 15.1, it rounds the size to 15 in the saved file. If you wish to replicate my experiment, you will need to change paragraph style "TOC 1" to 15.1 in the attached TMDX file. Since, in my document, "TOC 3" is linked to "TOC 2", which is linked to "TOC 1", you only need to change the paragraph font size of "TOC 1" to change all of the TOCs. Aside: is this not another tiny bug?

Of course the point of my experiment is not to demonstrate that TextMaker fails to properly format TOCs with bizarre font sizes that no one would ever actually use (although, in a perfect world, …). My point is to demonstrate that TextMaker will fail to properly format a TOC if it doesn’t like a combination of font and font sizing, character spacing, characters used, etc. And, again, it is my suspicion that TM's problem with generating perfectly formatted TOCs may stem from a fundamental defect it has in handling obscure paragraph formatting issues that just happen to occasionally occur with TOCs, not (just) with its ability to generate TOCs. This is, however, just my suspicion.

Do let me know if I have persuaded you or if you have any further questions. Or if I've overlooked anything else.


Cordially,
Richard

P.S. The above tests were done using the very latest version of TextMaker Professional 2021 currently available: TextMaker Professional 2021 (rev S1044.0316) 64bit

[SuperTech]

Thanks for further sharing this information. I have forwarded the complete details to our developer team for further investigation of this problem.