XML

In a recent post I explained how a table of contents can be accomplished using XSL. In my case I am using it in the BigMachines proposal editor.

One thing that were not that good with this solution was that I had to specify the length of the leader. This lead to undesired line breaks or too much space. Here is an alternative to the table of contents creation, which is the ‘tocThirdTemplate’ template if you’re looking at the other post for comparison.

Notice that the blocks are slightly different and I am also using ‘inline’ to get the text and number on the same row as the dots.

<xsl:template name="tocThirdTemplate">
	<!-- Define parameters to decide whether to display certain lines or not -->
	<xsl:param name="firstParam" />
	<xsl:param name="secondParam" />	

	<!--
	<fo:block><xsl:value-of select="$firstParam"/></fo:block>
	<fo:block><xsl:value-of select="$secondParam"/></fo:block>
	-->

	<fo:block xsl:use-attribute-sets="toc_block" text-align="left">First row
		<fo:inline space-after=".1in">
			<fo:leader leader-pattern="dots"/><fo:page-number-citation ref-id="anchorName1"/>
		</fo:inline>
	</fo:block>	

	<fo:block xsl:use-attribute-sets="toc_block_indent" text-align="left">Second row
		<fo:inline space-after=".1in">
			<fo:leader leader-pattern="dots"/><fo:page-number-citation ref-id="anchorName2"/>
		</fo:inline>
	</fo:block>		

	<fo:block xsl:use-attribute-sets="toc_block_indent" text-align="left">Third row
		<fo:inline space-after=".1in">
			<fo:leader leader-pattern="dots"/><fo:page-number-citation ref-id="anchorName3"/>
		</fo:inline>
	</fo:block>	

	<fo:block xsl:use-attribute-sets="toc_block_indent" text-align="left">Fourth row
		<fo:inline space-after=".1in">
			<fo:leader leader-pattern="dots"/><fo:page-number-citation ref-id="anchorName4"/>
		</fo:inline>
	</fo:block>			

	<fo:block xsl:use-attribute-sets="toc_block_indent" text-align="left">Fifth row
		<fo:inline space-after=".1in">
			<fo:leader leader-pattern="dots"/><fo:page-number-citation ref-id="anchorName5"/>
		</fo:inline>
	</fo:block>	

	<fo:block xsl:use-attribute-sets="toc_block_indent" text-align="left">Sixth row (<xsl:value-of select="$firstParam" />)
		<fo:inline space-after=".1in">
			<fo:leader leader-pattern="dots"/><fo:page-number-citation ref-id="anchorName6"/>
		</fo:inline>
	</fo:block>		

	<fo:block xsl:use-attribute-sets="toc_block_indent" text-align="left">Seventh row
		<fo:inline space-after=".1in">
			<fo:leader leader-pattern="dots"/><fo:page-number-citation ref-id="anchorName7"/>
		</fo:inline>
	</fo:block>	

	<xsl:if test="$secondParam = 'true'">
		<fo:block xsl:use-attribute-sets="toc_block_indent" text-align="left">Eight row
			<fo:inline space-after=".1in">
				<fo:leader leader-pattern="dots"/><fo:page-number-citation ref-id="anchorName8"/>
			</fo:inline>
		</fo:block>
	</xsl:if>

</xsl:template>

Furthermore, the attribute sets ‘toc_block’ and ‘toc_block_indent’ contained the attribute <xsl:attribute name=’text-align-last’>justify</xsl:attribute> but this should be removed in addition for this to work.

The result is a table of contents with actually always looks like the example in the former post, regardless of how many letters.

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Tagged as: bigmachines, table of contents, xml, xsl

Table of contents can be done more or less complex. This solution is a rather simple one and can successfully be used with BigMachines for example. Especially if you are using the the old XSL printout functionality.

This is the code that prints the actual table of contents. It uses templates to print the rows. The last called template below takes parameters to decide what content to print. The page-sequence tag that surronds the table of contents assures that it will be printed on its own page.

<!-- ################## Table of Contents ############################ -->	

<fo:page-sequence master-reference="aPageSequence" force-page-count="no-force">
    <fo:flow flow-name="xsl-region-body" font-family="sans-serif" font-size="10pt">
        <fo:block line-height="40pt"></fo:block>

	<xsl:if test="$var1='value1'">
            <xsl:call-template name="tocFirstTemplate" />
	</xsl:if>

        <xsl:if test="$var2='value2'">
	    <xsl:call-template name="tocSecondTemplate" />
        </xsl:if>								

        <xsl:if test="$var3='value3'">
	    <xsl:variable name="firstParam" select="$paramVar1" />
	    <xsl:variable name="secondParam" select="$paramVar2" />
	    <xsl:call-template name="tocThirdTemplate">
		<xsl:with-param name="firstParam" select="$firstParam" />
		<xsl:with-param name="secondParam" select="$firstParam" />
	    </xsl:call-template>
        </xsl:if>
    </fo:flow>
</fo:page-sequence>

Below is the third template that prints the last part of the table of contents. The first two templates work the same way. If they don’t have any arguments (parameters) you just skip the first rows. This is just a way of passing information to the template to use as conditions to decide what to display.

In this template, all rows except the first one are indented.
Styling are used for the fo:blocks and the fo:leader (which prints the dots) using attribute sets. Read this post for more information of styling with attribute sets. At the bottom of this article you will also find the attribute set for the leader used in this example.

There is a tag in the code called ‘<fo:page-number-citation ref-id=”anchorName”/>’. Placing tags like this in the table of contents (toc) and the actual anchors at the place in the document where the toc row refers to makes the page number appear here (magic).
The anchor looks like this (<fo:block id=”anchorName” />). There can only be one in the document for each corresponding referral in the toc.

<xsl:template name="tocThirdTemplate">
	<!-- Define parameters to decide whether to display certain lines or not -->
	<xsl:param name="firstParam" />
	<xsl:param name="secondParam" />	

	<!--
	<fo:block><xsl:value-of select="$firstParam"/></fo:block>
	<fo:block><xsl:value-of select="$secondParam"/></fo:block>
	-->

	<fo:block xsl:use-attribute-sets="toc_block">First row
		 <fo:leader xsl:use-attribute-sets="toc_leader" leader-length='86%' /> 
		<fo:page-number-citation ref-id="anchorName1/>

		<fo:block xsl:use-attribute-sets="toc_block_indent">Second row
			 <fo:leader xsl:use-attribute-sets="toc_leader" leader-length='84%' /> 
			<fo:page-number-citation ref-id="anchorName2"/>
		</fo:block>

		<fo:block xsl:use-attribute-sets="toc_block_indent">Third row
			 <fo:leader xsl:use-attribute-sets="toc_leader" leader-length='53%' /> 
			<fo:page-number-citation ref-id="anchorName3"/>
		</fo:block>			

		<fo:block xsl:use-attribute-sets="toc_block_indent">Fourth row
			 <fo:leader xsl:use-attribute-sets="toc_leader" leader-length='77%' /> 
			<fo:page-number-citation ref-id="anchorName4"/>
		</fo:block>	

		<fo:block xsl:use-attribute-sets="toc_block_indent">Fifth row
			 <fo:leader xsl:use-attribute-sets="toc_leader" leader-length='78%' /> 
			<fo:page-number-citation ref-id="anchorName5"/>
		</fo:block>		

		<fo:block xsl:use-attribute-sets="toc_block_indent">Sixth row (<xsl:value-of select="$firstParam" />)
			 <fo:leader xsl:use-attribute-sets="toc_leader" leader-length='60%' /> 
			<fo:page-number-citation ref-id="anchorName"/>
		</fo:block>	

		<fo:block xsl:use-attribute-sets="toc_block_indent">Seventh row
			 <fo:leader xsl:use-attribute-sets="toc_leader" leader-length='64%' /> 
			<fo:page-number-citation ref-id="anchorName7"/>
		</fo:block>

		<xsl:if test="$secondParam = 'true'">
			<fo:block xsl:use-attribute-sets="toc_block_indent">Eight row
				 <fo:leader xsl:use-attribute-sets="toc_leader" leader-length='58%' /> 
				<fo:page-number-citation ref-id="anchorName8"/>
			</fo:block>
		</xsl:if>

	</fo:block>
</xsl:template>

The attribute set styling for the leader looks like this:

<xsl:attribute-set name='toc_leader'>
	<xsl:attribute name='rule-thickness'>.1pt</xsl:attribute>
	<xsl:attribute name='leader-pattern'>dots</xsl:attribute>
	<xsl:attribute name='leader-alignment'>reference-area</xsl:attribute>
	<xsl:attribute name='font-size'>10pt</xsl:attribute>
</xsl:attribute-set>

And one final note. The example at the top of this article starts with page count 6 because there are other things in the document that is not included in this table of contents.

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Tagged as: bigmachines, table of contents, xml, xsl