Determining Heading Levels for a Print TOC

Note: If you create books in the outline TOC (whether they are linked to topics or not), they will affect the heading level in the print TOC. If you want unlinked books to be converted to headings in the output (both in the print TOC and in the main body), you can do so. See Creating Headings for Unlinked Books in a Generated TOC.

Note: What happens if you are using classes of heading styles and then select the "Use TOC depth for heading levels option"? For example, let's say you have classes of your <h1> and <h2> heading styles. Suppose you created h1.Special (with a blue font), and h2.Special (with a red font). Meanwhile the primary <h1> and <h2> styles both use a black font. In your topics, you've applied your heading style classes to some heading content. And in your outline TOC, you organized the structure like this:

Because you selected the option to use TOC depth for heading levels, some of the level-1 headings will become level-2 headings or even level-3 headings in the output. If you have headings where you used h1.Special but their level in the output was not affected (i.e., they remain as level-1 headings), they will keep the properties from the style class. In other words, they will stay blue. But if the structure of the outline TOC causes them to become level-2 headings in the output, they will take on the properties of the h2.Special tag—because the class has the same name ("Special") as its <h1> counterpart. Therefore, those headings will have a red font. However, let's say that your level-2 class was named something different (e.g., h2.Red). In that case, h1.Special headings that are pushed to become level-2 headings will instead use properties from the main <h2> tag. In other words, they will have a black font—not blue like h1.Special and not red like h2.Red.

1. From the Content Explorer, open the stylesheet that you want to modify. By default, stylesheets are stored in the Resources\Stylesheets folder, but you can store them elsewhere if you like.

2. Make sure the appropriate medium is selected. If you are not using stylesheet mediums for your different outputs or if you want all mediums to have the same settings, just leave the medium set to "default" and continue.

   Mediums can be used if you want to use one group of settings for online output types (DotNet Help, Eclipse Help, Microsoft HTML Help, HTML5, WebHelp, WebHelp AIR, WebHelp Mobile, WebHelp Plus) and another group of settings for print-based output types (Adobe FrameMaker, Adobe PDF, Microsoft Word, Microsoft XPS, XHTML). For example, you might use the "default" medium for your online outputs and you might use the "print" medium for your print outputs. See About Stylesheet Mediums.

   

3. In the local toolbar, make sure the first button displays (which means that the Advanced view is currently shown in the editor). If the button displays instead, then click it.
4. In the upper-left corner of the editor, click in the Show Styles field and select .

5. From the area below, select the <h1> through <h6> style (h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6) that you want to customize.

   If you created other custom styles for your headings (e.g., p.MyIndexHeading), you can select those styles instead (you may first need to switch to a view that shows all paragraph styles). The mc-heading-level property (which is the property that determines the heading level in a print TOC) can be applied to any paragraph style.

6. From the Show drop-down list on the upper-right side of the editor, select .
7. In the Properties section, expand the PrintSupport group.
8. Click in the right column next to mc-heading-level and select the level for the heading style (e.g., 0, 1, 2, 3). The higher the number, the lower in the hierarchy the heading will be displayed in the print TOC. If you select 0, the heading will not be included in the print TOC.
9. Click to save your work.