Stone Design Forums

I just went through the manual and couldn't find an answer to this. Is there any way to create a TOC without it being setup for the web? I'm using Create for manuals, so my output is PDF, not HTML. I would like to be able to assign either a tag or as part of the style the ability to say if something is placed into a TOC. For example, I have three levels of headings; Heading 1, Heading 2, and Heading 3. I have setup a style for each, what would be nice is the ability to somewhere also say Heading 1 and Heading 2 items are included in the TOC, then generate a TOC later on...if this sounds familiar to some of you, it's because it probably is, this is how FrameMaker works. While I'm NOT trying to make Create into FrameMaker, there are a few items which I would love to see and auto TOC creation is one of them.

Wayne

No, no way to make TOC's at the current time.
Andrew

Not just FileMaker as I recall, this ability is in PageMaker and InDesign too.

You may notice that FileMaker, PageMaker and InDesign are all Adobe products.

Similarly, Adobe bundled the ability to distill PDFs into InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop in later versions (negating the need to buy Acrobat to get Distiller for people using those apps). Adobe has often leveraged their position as the creators of PDF to help give their own products key advantages over the competition.


There are advantages to having Acrobat... and I still have and use Acrobat 5.0.10 on my systems today. I have not upgraded beyond Acrobat 5 due in large part to the fact that Acrobat 6 Standard was actually a down grade (offered fewer features than Acrobat 5). Also as Distiller in Acrobat 5 was never made Mac OS X native, and I get free upgrades for life with PStill, I've been quite happy staying with my current combination of apps.

If you have both Create and PStill you may want to consider Acrobat 5 from somewhere like ebay. I wouldn't go as far as to recommend any of the later Acrobat Standard versions as I'm not sure what Adobe pulled from them in the way of features.

For example, I created a form in Create and was able to add the form fields to that document in Acrobat 5... I highly doubt that functionality exists in either Acrobat 6/7 Standard.


At least we don't need to worry about Andrew pulling features and calling it an upgrade.

Acrobat 5 did less than Acrobat 4 (for example, Adobe pulled the OCR capture engine out of the Mac version of Acrobat 5) and Acrobat 6/7 Standard does less than Acrobat 5... at about $100 per upgrade, the move from Acrobat 4 to Acrobat 5 to Acrobat 6/7 Standard represents $200-$300 paid to Adobe for feature reductions.



I guess this is how Adobe is fighting bloat in their products.

I think you meant FrameMaker, not FileMaker, as FileMaker is an Apple/FileMaker product.

And actually, FrameMaker as it stands today only has Adobe's logo on the product. It really has changed very little from the product the FrameMaker corporation designed, then later sold to Adobe.

Actually, I own the whole Stone Design bundle, and I own Acrobat, so I can do a lot, but auto creation of a TOC is really something that should be considered essential to a publishing/design package. I really find it hard to believe that I'm the first person to ask for this feature. I could go through short documents and manually create one, but on larger documents this is a real pain and something that really isn't feasible.

And I guess depending on your point of view, my next comment could be taken as a compliment or as a negative remark. I find Create a lot like the PageMaker of old when it comes to print. I liked PageMaker back "in the day", so consider it a compliment from me.

However there are a couple of things I would love to see in Create. But that doesn't take away from the product. In fact, the few features it seems to lack for print, it makes up for in web design. I just find myself using Create for print that's all.

Wayne

Yes... I was discussing FileMaker with a client at about the same time I was writing that post.


I started using FrameMaker on both Macs and NeXT back in 1992, but Adobe did add the feature to auto create a linked table of contents when creating a PDF... this was added in version 5.5 as I recall. In fact, Adobe substantially reworked the underlying application to make it the best PDF authoring tool possible. The PDF part of FrameMaker was so important that Adobe bundled Acrobat even with the Unix versions of FrameMaker.


You are most certainly not the first... and people have been asking for this ability from tons of other applications not made by Adobe.

Case in point... the PDF creation feature that Microsoft just removed from Office 2007 at Adobe's request.

For this to be part of Create, you are talking about building in a PDF engine beyond what is there now (which is mainly an extension of Quartz I believe). We are talking about something that I would guess would be even more extensive than what PStill uses now.

In the case of Microsoft, from what I can tell, making a compliant PDF was an additional option... which means that they did things in their PDF engine that they shouldn't have (not surprising, they've been sued a number of times for polluting standards in this way).

Most of the products that offer those types of features are two to four times as expensive as Create. I don't know about anyone else, but I really don't want to see Create abandon mid-range users to become a high priced, high end professional app. Rewriting Create to do this type of thing would cost a lot of man hours (on Andrew's part) and would significantly change the cost of the application.

Basically, I can't imagine that being a free upgrade... so maybe these features will be added in our next lives.

I learned page layout on PageMaker... I have almost every version (from 1.0 to 6.5) and it was my tool of choice before I started using Create. I also own QuarkXPress (3.3x and 4.x) and offer support and training in both QuarkXPress (3.3 to 6.5) and InDesign (1.0 to 4.0).

Because I'm very comfortable with pretty much all apps in this area, I'm a firm believer in the right tool for the right job. I wouldn't pitch Create at my professional graphic design clients any more than I would pitch QuarkXPress/InDesign at my non-professional graphic design and creative clients.

I have said it many times, I truly feel that companies like Adobe have forgotten* that there is a large number of people out there with a need for this type of ability but who do not make a living at it and can neither afford the high end software nor do they need all of the high end features.

I find Andrew's software perfect for these types of users. People were worried that Pages was going to take users away from Create... the thing is, Pages is designed for those who look at a new blank page in fear and horror, Create is designed for people who look at a blank page and see almost endless possibilities. And yes, there are people I have recommended iWork to just because they really didn't have the ability or inclination to create something new.


But yes, I have a fondness for PageMaker (and have it installed on my old Mac OS systems still). I wish Adobe had taken the time to work with PageMaker (providing it with a plug in structure) when they first got it.

Part of the reason that (beyond the PDF features) neither PageMaker nor FrameMaker received the type of development effort that GoLive got was that Adobe had already decided to build their own layout app from scratch by that point (InDesign, then known as K2, was started 1996 as I recall).


*They have begun to address this area with products like Photoshop Elements, but most people still think that to get the functionality that we have in the Stone Design apps required software that makes computer hardware seem inexpensive.

At this point I don't even want links to pages, all I'm looking for is the generation of a table of contents in Create. I can manually link things if I need to using Acrobat. But, I'm not so concerned about PDF as you seem to think I am. I just want a plain TOC creation tool without me manually having to create one.

Wayne