[texhax] Table of contents going missing.

[Ross Moore]

On Thu, 7 Aug 2003 mmccarthy at eircom.ie wrote:

> Hi there, I'm writing a LaTeX document using WinEdt and my Table of Contents
> has gone missing from the output file (in both ps and pdf format). The tex.
> file seems ok, the .toc file with same name looks ok. I've tried the
> automatic way of generating the table of contents and I've tried manually
> writing the .toc file but to no avail. I'm wondering if this is a common
> occurrence and if anyone has found the root cause of the problem or whether
> it is a known bug? I've read the manual and am pretty confident that I'm
> doing everything by the book.
>
> If you have any answers or pointers as to what I can do to rectify this I
> would appreciate it greatly.

Just run your job again; the TOC should re-appear.

The .toc file is written at the end of a run.
It is read when \tableofcontents is encountered, usually near the
beginning of the run.

If you encountered a mistake, forcing the run to abort before finishing,
then the .toc file might be left empty. On the next run, there will
be no TOC contents, since there is nothing in the .toc at that time.
(There should be just a title on an otherwise empty page.)
This can leave you in a state similar to what you describe.

Now all will be well on the *next* run ...

  ... unless the error that caused the problem initially is still present;
say it may be occurring in the writing-out of the .toc file.
E.g., there may be a need to \protect a fragile macro in a section-name
 --- unlikely, since you said the .toc had been written OK.
But is your .toc file *clean*; i.e without high-level macros expanded into
primitives -- lots of @ signs that you didn't write yourself ?
That's an obvious symptom of failure to \protect .


Hope this helps,

	Ross Moore

>
> Kindest Regards,
>
> Martin.
>
>
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