Re: [Groff] ms macro - depth of table of contents

[Keith MARSHALL]

Ruediger Haertel wrote:
> is there a way to restrict the tables of content (.TC) to a depth?
> Haven't found anything in s.tmac.

.TC will emit *everything* you tell it to, as a consequence of your
use of .XA or .XS/.XE macros, in your document body.  Once this
content is defined, there is no way to selectively suppress parts
of it, within .TC

However, you *can* be selective, at the time you define the TOC
entries, by using .if requests in association with a register, which
you can define on the command line, when you invoke groff.

For example, if your document body contains something like ...

  .if !rTCDEPTH .nr TCDEPTH 0 \" avoid warnings if undefined
  .
  .
  .XS
  Table of contents entry -- always printed
  .XE
  .
  .
  .if \n[TCDEPTH]>=3 \{\
  .   XS
  Table of contents entry -- not printed if \en[TCDEPTH] < 3
  .   XE
  .   \}
  .
  .
  .TC

Then, if you invoke groff as ...

  groff -ms ...

the table of contents, generated by .TC, will include only the first
of the two .XS/.XE entries, but ...

  groff -ms -rTCDEPTH=3 ...

will cause it to include both.

Have a look in the `Macro Packages/ms/ms Page Layout/ms TOC' section
of `info groff', for more on the .TC related macros.  You could also
look at spdf.tmac, in the `contrib/pdfmark' directory of the current
groff CVS, for a fairly crude example of how I have tied TOC entries
to section headings, with formatting based on heading levels -- see
the definition of the XN macro.

HTH.

Best regards,
Keith.