Re: Finding which template, formatting part of a ToC

Hi Jennifer,

Can you tell me what version of DocBook XSL your customization is based 
on?  The <p class="toc"> element was replaced by <div class="toc"> quite 
awhile ago.

In general, the way it works is that the document is processed again in 
mode="toc".  Instead of the normal processing of an element to format 
its content, the mode="toc" processes the element to generate just an 
entry in the TOC for that element by formatting its title inside an <a> 
link whose @href points to that element's content.  You'll find in 
html/autotoc.xsl a set of templates matching on different elements and 
with the attribute mode="toc", such as this one:

<xsl:template match="preface|chapter|appendix|article" mode="toc">
   <xsl:param name="toc-context" select="."/>

   <xsl:call-template name="subtoc">
     <xsl:with-param name="toc-context" select="$toc-context"/>
     <xsl:with-param name="nodes" select="section|sect1
|bridgehead[$bridgehead.in.toc != 0]"/>
   </xsl:call-template>
</xsl:template>

The $nodes parameter is a list of the children of the current element 
that should be included as a sublist under that element's TOC line.

The template that does all the work is named "subtoc".  It is in subtoc 
where you will find the code that generates a line in the TOC:

<a>
       <xsl:attribute name="href">
         <xsl:call-template name="href.target">
           <xsl:with-param name="context" select="$toc-context"/>
         </xsl:call-template>
       </xsl:attribute>
       <xsl:apply-templates select="." mode="title.markup"/>
</a>

The order of processing in subtoc is a bit confusing, because it 
processes the children first into a temporary subtoc.list variable, then 
outputs the TOC line followed by that subtoc list variable.

The handling of <dl> has always been a bit inconsistent across browser 
versions.  In more recent versions of the stylesheet there is a 
stylesheet param named 'toc.list.type' which lets you replace 
<dl><dd><dt> with <ul><li>.  You can use CSS to turn off the bullets for 
the <ul> list.    Does your version of html/autotoc.xsl have a line like 
this:

               <xsl:element name="{$toc.list.type}">

If so, then you can replace <dl>, which might solve some of your 
formatting problem.

Bob Stayton
[email protected]

On 6/30/2020 10:38 AM, Jennifer Moore wrote:
> Hi folks
>
> On a hunt for which template I need to tweak for a table of contents 
> in an article.  A clue or two from someone more expert would help!
>
> Context is, I've got an old copy of oXygen, and I use some 
> slightly-customised XSL to convert DocBook 5 to HTML, for blog posts.
>
> I haven't needed to change any of the XSL for some years now, so I'd 
> semi-forgotten what I used to know about that when I set it up - which 
> even at the time was not a huge amount - but have re-reminded myself 
> of some, by re-reading bits of Bob's book and posts I made to the 
> lists at the time :-)
>
> Today's problem:
>
> When writing articles, usually I've used <section>.  Now I've added 
> <section> within <section>.
>
> In the auto-generated HTML table of contents, the layout now isn't 
> quite right - it's adding some line breaks I don't want, and losing 
> the font size part way through.
>
> So I thought I'd get into the template and see what it's doing, and 
> see if I can work out how to adjust it to my liking.
>
> Step 1, find out which template is doing that bit!
>
> The post-transform HTML contains some <dd> tags to create an indent 
> for the lower-level sections, which seems like it could be a clue as 
> to what the relevant bit of XSL will look like when I find it.  So I 
> tried searching on <dd>.  But it turns out <dd> appears in quite a lot 
> of the XSL files, so that's not enough of a clue for me to work out 
> which one :-)
>
> I do know which template is _calling_ the bit I'm interested in:
>
> <xsl:template name="make.toc">
>
> It sets up the "outer layer" of the ToC, and it's in an 
> already-slightly-customised file for ToCs which is an adaptation of, I 
> think, autotoc.xsl.
>
> By looking at this previously-customised make.toc, and sticking in 
> some dummy classes to see what appeared where in the HTML, I was able 
> to deduce that the part of it that's actually doing the work (in this 
> case) is this:
>
> <xsl:otherwise>
>   <xsl:if test="$nodes">
>     <p class="toc">
>       <xsl:copy-of select="$toc.title"/>
>       <xsl:apply-templates select="$nodes" mode="toc">
>         <xsl:with-param name="toc-context" select="$toc-context"/>
>       </xsl:apply-templates>
>     </p>
>   </xsl:if>
> </xsl:otherwise>
>
> If I understand correctly, apply-templates is what tells the middle 
> bit of the ToC to be assembled by a different template somewhere else, 
> or several different templates.
>
> I get that the with-param tag is passing a variable through to the 
> other templates.
>
> select="$nodes" mode="toc" is unfamiliar to me, I'm not sure what 
> that's doing.
>
> Logically, I assume that somewhere along the way, as well as creating 
> the layout of the list, it's also taking the <title> and the xml:id of 
> each <section>, and using those to assemble a link.  That bit of 
> transformation could be happening in a different template from the one 
> I need to tweak, though.
>
> Any clues about finding it?
>
> Thanks!
>
> Jennifer
>