Re: Two questions about tables of contents

[Valeriy E. Ushakov]

On Tue, Feb 03, 1998 at 12:21:48AM +0700, Victor Sudakov wrote:

> 1. Place my table of contents in an arbitrary position in my document. What
> I am looking for would be a symbol like @TableOfContents which I can place
> anywhere in the document where I wish.    

With doc you can use @ContentsGoesHere.  Other document types has
contents hardwired in one particular place, but this is what document
types about, you don't have to bother.  So either use doc or modify
existing document type to suit your needs.


> 2. Is there a way of creating an arbitrary entry in the table of contents?
> An entry which would be by no way connected with the document structure? All
> I need is the correct page number for the page where the entry is located.

* No, there isn't.  Existing document types doesn't provide this feature
(and must not, IMNSHO).  If you need an entry in the TOC, common sense
dictates that this entry must correspond to some entity in your
document.  So you'd better make a document type that makes this kind
of entity explicit.  dl defines @LargeScaleStructure that greatly
simplifies the task.

* Yes, there is.  Take a look at @ContentsEntry in dl.  It's not
exported, so you'll have to write a wrapper that extends @DocumentLayout.

Hope it helps.



PS: And no, Jerzy, I'm *not* "responding with reproaches".  The main
strength of Lout is it's programmability.  Lout is built around few
simple but powerful ideas and the core language is very small.  If I
may use an analogy, Lout is similar in spirit to Scheme.  And yes,
Lout has its warts and deficiencies.  If they get in the way and one
can't work around them or redesign to avoid them, choose a different
tool.  No language or system has inherent superiority but some are
more suitable for some applications than others.

Lout community is very small and, yes, the lack of time is genuine
problem for most of us.  If I had more time, I'd be glad to answer in
details (and witness my postings to the list in the past years, when I
had had more time).

And if I *really* were a bad guy, I'd quote "no fitness for any
particular purpose" from the license :-)

Well, it's about attitude and not about Lout.  gnu.misc.discuss is
more suitable place for discussion like this.  Can we agree to
disagree and close this?

Respectfully yours
Uwe
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