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Using Styles for Print TOC Heading Levels

When creating print-based output, you can determine which topic headings will be displayed at which level in the generated TOC. For example, even though all of your topics may use a heading style of <h1>, you might want some of those topic headings to display at the first level in the print TOC (acting as an <h1>), others at the second level (acting as an <h2>), and still others at the third level (acting as an <h3>).

One option is to base the headings on style levels. The mc-heading-level property is used to indicate a TOC level for a style. This property is already set to 1 for <h1> styles, 2 for <h2> styles, 3 for <h3> styles, and so on. Therefore, you can simply use the <h1> through <h6> styles provided by Flare in your content. You can also set the mc-heading-level property to the appropriate depth level for any paragraph style that you want to use as a heading. In the output, the print TOC will display styles with an mc-heading-level value of 1 at the highest (far left) level, those with a value of 2 at the next level, and so on (regardless of the structure of the outline TOC).

example

Let's say that you have applied <h1>, <h2>, and <h3> styles to headings in your topics, but you only want the headings with <h2> and <h3> styles to be included in the print TOC (omitting <h1> headings from the print TOC). You can do this by designating the level of the "mc-heading-level." A level of 0 means the heading is not included in the print TOC, a level of 1 means that it is included at the highest level in the TOC hierarchy (farthest to the left), a level of 2 means that it is included at the second highest level in the TOC hierarchy, and so on. Therefore, for this example, you might set the mc-heading-level for the <h1> style to 0. And if you want to move the <h2> and <h3> headings up a level, you could set the mc-heading-level property for <h2> to 1, and the property for <h3> to 2.

How to use styles to determine heading levels in a print TOC

Open the topic style sheet that you want to modify.
Make sure the appropriate medium is selected. If you are not using style sheet 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, HTML Help, WebHelp, WebHelp Plus, WebHelp AIR, WebHelp Mobile) and another group of settings for print-based output types (Adobe PDF, XHTML, Microsoft XPS, Microsoft Word, Adobe FrameMaker). 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 Style Sheet Mediums.
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.
In the upper-left corner of the editor, click in the Show Styles field and select Show Heading Styles.
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.
From the Show Properties drop-down list on the upper-right side of the editor, select Show: Property Groups.
In the Properties section, click the plus button next to PrintSupport to expand the group.
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.
Press CTRL+S or click to save your work.

Note: As an alternative to basing headings on styles, you can base the headings on the outline TOC structure. See Using TOC Depth for Heading Levels.

WHAT'S NEXT?

Make sure you apply the styles to be used in the generated TOC to the appropriate headings in your content. See Applying Styles to Topic Content.