PDFClerk Pro is able to automatically create outlines in the
Outline List by analysing a Table Of Contents. This feature will work
for the majority of TOC entries, and allows for some flexibility in
how the TOC is formatted. To create the outlines, you need to tell
PDFClerk Pro a few specifics about the formatting of the TOC and the
desired formatting of the resulting outline entries. Choose the menu
item Tools > Create Outline From TOC
.
In the dialog you specify the page on which the TOC starts and the page on which the TOC ends. As you enter numbers in the input fields for the start and end pages, the preview will automatically scroll to the page with the number entered. (Note that these fields expect the number as an index to the desired page from the start of the document. This is not necessarily the same as the page label for the desired page, which isn’t even necessarily a number.)
Next you specify whether PDFClerk Pro tries to create a
hierarchical outline structure by following the visual indentation of
each TOC entry, or whether it should follow chapter and paragraph
numbering (for instance a paragraph entry might look like this:
2.4.1 The General Structure of a Table Of Contents
).
TOCs usually have a number of entries that do not follow the
general pattern of the regular entries. For instance the first entry
may refer to the TOC itself; an Appendix entry will not have a
paragraph numbering; some entries may state a chapter number before
the actual name of the chapter (like: Chapter 4: The frugality of
the means
), but you do not want the chapter indication to be
included in the created outline. For such cases you can alert
PDFClerk Pro to special terms so that it can deal with them
appropriately. Terms can be a single word or an expression consisting
of multiple words. PDFClerk Pro only looks for the first occurrence of
a term in a TOC entry; subsequent occurrences of the special term will
not be treated as special terms. You can specify the following
characteristics and options for the terms:
Has Page Label:
Use if the term includes a page label that doesn’t appear in the
normal pattern or the page label (which is either at the start of the
TOC entry or at the end).
Hide Term:
The term will not be included in the label text for the outline
item created for this TOC entry.
Has Trailer:
The term is followed by a token that qualifies the term (like the
2
in Chapter 2
).
Hide Trailer:
The trailer will not be included in the label text for the outline
item created for this TOC entry.
Has Text Numbering:
The term is preceded at the start of the line by a
chapter/paragraph number. This is useful only when Indentation
is set to Follow Chapter/Paragraph Numbering
.
Link Line To Page It Appears On:
This usually applies to the special terms Contents
and
Table Of Contents
which should be linked to the page they
appear on.
Match Case:
The term will only match text that whose case matches. For
instance, if this option is selected and the term is
Introduction
, then when introduction
is found in the
text on the page, it won’t be considered a match.
Introduction
on the other hand, will be considered a match.
If a document is in a language other than English you will of course need to change/enter the terms to the equivalent for the TOC elements in the other language.
This tells PDFClerk Pro to look for the first occurrence of the relevant text in the TOC on the target page and to make the outline link directly to that section of the page. If you switch this option off PDFClerk Pro will always create the links to the page itself, rather than to a specific location on the page.
Automatic outline generation is a convenient feature that can save you hours of manual labour where you otherwise would have to manually create each outline entry. However, it is not a full-proof method. Some entries may not be correctly parsed by PDFClerk Pro and other issues may result in outline entries that need further manual adjustment. It is therefore recommended to check the outline list created by PDFClerk Pro for completeness and correctness. Especially:
Check that an outline was created for each TOC entry that was not specifically defined to be ignored.
Check for spurious entries. Most notably TOC entries that span more than 1 line will not be handled correctly by PDFClerk Pro.
Check that each entry links to the correct page (and location on the page). If the page document’s labels do not match the target labels in the TOC the links will not link to the correct pages.
Check the label text of each outline for correctness and spurious characters. (Systemic issues that can occur with some TOCs, like a spurious dot at the end of some outline labels, can easily be corrected using the find and replace feature for outlines.)
If the generated outline’s hierarchical indentation is set to follow the visual indentation, and left and right pages have different margins, then indentation is likely to be incorrect per group of outlines generated from the more indented pages. You will need to manually move those outlines into the correct position.
