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Create and Edit Outlines

This section describes how you can create and edit outlines.

Create individual outline items

You can create individual outline items by dragging a page in the page list on the left of the document window to the outline list on the right of the document window. Drag in between existing items to place the new outline item in between, or drag on top of an existing item to place the new outline item as a child of the target item. After dragging the item into place, you can rename the new item by double clicking it and editing the text. The item will automatically link to the source page when clicked.

Remove outline items

To remove outline items, select the items to remove in the list and then press the Delete or the Backspace key, or bring up the contextual menu on the list and select Remove Selected Outlines.

Order outline items

Order outline items by grabbing them and dragging them to their new location. Drag in between items to place the dragged item in between; drag on top of items to place the dragging item as a child of the target item.

Alternatively you can adjust the outline hierarchy using the Tab key:
Select the outline(s) you wish to indent and press the Tab key. The outline will become the last child of the current sibling above it. If you hold down the option key while pressing Tab the outline will become the first child of the current sibling above it. If an outline is the first child in a group of siblings it will not be moved. Press Shit-Tab to move outlines up in the hierarchy.

Edit outline item destination

Double click an outline item to edit its text. To edit other properties of the item, show the outline item inspector by clicking the small disclosure triangle at the bottom right corner of the outline list.

Explode by Outlines

PDF Nomad can explode a document into chapters, or, for that matter, into ranges of pages according to any selection in the outline list.

The contextual menu lists the levels of outlines that are present in the document. You batch select all outlines at a level through the menu. The levels in the list are automatically expanded or collapsed to reflect your choice.

The Explode by Outlines menu item of the Export menu explodes the range of pages corresponding to each selected outline into separate PDF documents. (If no outlines are selected, all visible outlines are exported.) The page range for an outline starts with the page the outline links to and ends with the page that precedes the page linked to by the following outline. (You can also opt for the first page of the next outline to be included in the the preceding range. This is useful when new chapters/sections do not always start on a new page.)

The created documents are named according to the original document title and the page ranges from the original document they include. As with other PDF export functions, a filter can be applied during the export.

Batch edit outline titles and batch reorder outline items

The Outline List sports a dedicated Find And Replace function, that is accessed by control-clicking, or right-clicking, the list and selected the Find And Replace menu item. This brings up the Find And Replace dialog for outlines.

This dialog allows you to search for words/expressions in the list of outlines and to make individual and/or global substitutions. Searches and replacements can be either literal (the text entered in the input fields is used as is for searching and replacing) or regular expressions (the input is parsed and interpreted, which allows for very powerful searches and substitutions.)

You can also batch indent/outdent outlines based on the matches. To do so, select the desired action from the bottom popup menu, enter an appropriate query in the Find field, and click the Apply button.

Examples Of Regular Expression Finds:
• To match a trailing dot at the end of an outline label: \.$
The \ is needed to escape the dot so that it is parsed literally (instead of as a dot operator). The $ specifies that that a match is valid only if it occurs at the end of a line.

• To match a trailing exclamation mark at the end of an outline label: !$
The exclamation mark does not need to be escaped since it has no special meaning as an operator. The $ specifies that that a match is valid only if it occurs at the end of a line.

• To match chapter/paragraph numbering like "5.2.1.4", at the start of an outline label:
^[0-9]+\.?[0-9]?\.?[0-9]?\.?[0-9]? This will match up to four levels deep. The $ specifies that that a match is valid only if it occurs at the start of a line. [0-9] will match any digit from 0 to 9. The + symbol indicates that the match must occur one or more times. The ? symbol indicates that a match may occur 0 or more times. Finally, the \ is used to escape characters that have special meaning, like the dot, to be interpreted literally.

For information on using ICU Regular Expressions see:
http://www.icu-project.org/userguide/regexp.html

Auto-Incrementing Number Replacement

The find/replace option allows the insertion of numbers that increment/decrement by a fixed value on each subsequent outline item that matches the regular expression in the Find field. Although it looks like regular expression syntax this is not a regular expression, yet it is only available when regular expression is enabled in the dialog and the action is Replace All. Only the first appearance of this syntax will be used for the replacement value. If you enter this syntax multiple times it will insert the value of the first occurrence multiple times.

Use the syntax $[n1,n2] in the Replacement field to insert the numbers. N1 is the starting number, n2 is the increment value. To decrement use a negative value.

Examples:
• $[108, -2] will insert the number 108 at the first match, 106 at the second match, etc.

• To add a ‘line number’ at the start of each outline entry you would use “^” as the entry in the Find field, and “$[1,1] “ (note the trailing space) as the entry in the Replacement field.

Automated outline creation from document contents

PDF Nomad 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 PDF Nomad a few specifics about the formatting of the TOC and the desired formatting of the resulting outline entries. Choose the menu item Tools Outline and Link AutomationCreate Outline From Table Of Contents…

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 PDF Nomad 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 PDF Nomad to special terms so that it can deal with them appropriately. Terms can be a single word or an expression consisting of multiple words. PDF Nomad 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:

  1. 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).
  2. Hide Term: The term will not be included in the label text for the outline item created for this TOC entry.
  3. Has Trailer: The term is followed by a token that qualifies the term (like the “2” in “Chapter 2”).
  4. Hide Trailer: The trailer will not be included in the label text for the outline item created for this TOC entry.
  5. 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”.
  6. 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.
  7. 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.

Attempt to locate targets tells PDF Nomad 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 PDF Nomad will always create the links to the page itself, rather than to a specific location on the page.

Limitations: 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 has limitations. Some entries may not be correctly parsed by PDF Nomad and other issues in outline entries may result, that need further manual adjustment. It is therefore recommended to check the outline list created by PDF Nomad 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 PDF Nomad.
  • 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.

Creating Outlines Automatically From Selected Links
If the entries in the table of contents are already linked, then you can create outlines automatically from those links. Usually this yields more precise results than linking directly through the text. Choose the menu item Tools Outline and Link AutomationCreate Outline From Links…

This will bring up the same dialog as above, but will use the exisiting links instead of the text in the table of contents to create the outlines. PDF Nomad will create an outline item for each link. It will attempt to create a hierarchical outline in as far as the links suggest a hierarchy, but, if necessary, it is easy to further arrange the entries into a hierarchy as explained under the heading Batch edit outline titles and batch reorder outline items above.