[ODFTOOLKIT-329] Add a new Simple API to generate a table of content in text document

• Type: New Feature
• Status: Resolved
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Affects Version/s: 0.5-incubating
• Fix Version/s: 0.6-incubating
• Component/s: simple api
• Assignee: Da Li Liu
• Reporter: Da Li Liu
• Created: 03/Aug/12 01:42
• Updated: 19/Dec/12 05:53
• Resolved: 07/Dec/12 06:59

Description

Dear all,
I want to generate a table of content by ODF toolkit Simple API. But it seems that there doesn't exist such method. So I proposal to add a new API createTOC to Simple API.
Specification: parameters for the new API are: 1. position/location of TOC, 2. TOC style to be used
ODFToolkit API: TextDocument.createTOC(positionElement, TOCStyle).

Discuss with Rob Weir:
Rob:
Also, it would be good to discuss how you will enter a ToC. If you
do this operation in a word processor, like OpenOffice, you see it
does two things:

1) Enter the markup for <text:table-of-content> that defines the
structure and style relations for the table of contents.

2) Gather the header text from elsewhere in the document and enter
that, along with page references, into a <text:index-body>

Doing #1 is easy. But #2 is very difficult. Why? Because until you
do a full layout of the document, taking into account font metrics,
line breaking algorithms, hyphenation, image positioning, "orphan and
widow" rules, etc., you don't know what content is on which page.

DaLi: yeah, you are right, the page number will be difficult issue.

Rob:
So the easiest thing is to just do #1 and then have the user do an
"Update Table" operation in the word process the next time the
document is loaded.

Dali:I will try to do #1 first.

Rob:
Next easiest is to collect the header text to put in the ToC, but not
try to calculate the page numbers, leaving that to be calculated when
the document is loaded in a full word processor.

Dali:After finish #1, will consider this.

Any comments are welcome