[Scribus] Creating a table of contents

[John Culleton]

On Monday 24 May 2004 05:59 am, Craig Bradney wrote:
> On looking for a Linux program to create a 8.5x11
> > book with continuous pagination and a table of
> > contents. 
>
> there is a table of contents generator script under
> development but its not ready for use yet
>
> Craig

TeX in its many incarnations will of course do this. But it 
is possible to use it to just create the raw material of a 
TOC. Here is what I would do:

1. Leave blank pages for the TOC.
2. Create a pdf of the book via e.g. Scribus.
3. Create an ASCII file of the book via ps2ascii or a 
similar utility.
4. Using an editor like Vim change all the ^L characters to 
the string \vfil\eject (mass change)
5. Put \input eplain.tex at the head of the file.
5a. Read the Eplain manual!
6. Put a chapter{myname} at the head of each chapter. 
7. Run pdftex myfile.tex twice.

You now have a typeset TOC and a raw TOC file. Use either to 
import into Scribus.

An analagous technique can be used to create in index via 
TeX and  makeindex. 

I haven't found a single Open Source DTP tool that does 
everything efficiently. Currently I am using TeX for body 
text of normal books, Vim for editing, Xpdf for a WYSIWYG 
display of the output.  I am probably going to use Scribus 
for covers because of the precise measurement/placement  of 
items via guides and the inherent CMYK capability. Fancy 
graphic effects will still come from Gimp for importation 
into Scribus as JPEG files.  

But thanks to the latest tutorial, Scribus is in my toolbox, 
and I will use it for what it can do where appropriate, and 
other tools for all the rest. It is a formidable instument!

-- 
John Culleton
Able Typesetters and Indexers
http://wexfordpress.com