On Mon, Jan 06, 2025 at 06:27:58AM +0000, Werner LEMBERG wrote: > > > I'm inclined not to do it for the title page, but do it for the > > contents. > > Sounds good, thanks.
It is quite straightforward to always add an outline entry for the table of contents at the beginning of the outline. However, it is possible for @contents to occur at the end of the document. Then the entry should be at the end of the outline. (The table of contents in the middle of a document does not work.) However, the order of entries in the outline is defined by the .toc file that is read by the @contents command. So if the position of the @contents command is to be kept, then @contents should write to the .toc file. This is not possible, as you cannot read from and write to the same file at the same time. For example, if @contents is at the start of the file, writing to the .toc file in @contents would wipe out the .toc file from the last run. We would need some other way of detecting if @contents is being used at the very end of the document. I tried doing it with special-case code to check if a @node had been seen yet, but this does not account for the case of @shortcontents at the start of the file, and @contents at the end, if an outline entry is to be generated for @shortcontents as well (we cannot write to the .toc file in @shortcontents either). So it is quite tricky to handle all possible cases correctly.
