ubuntu-developer-manual team mailing list archive

[Kevin Godby <godbyk@xxxxxxxxx>]

'allo.

On Tue, Jan 4, 2011 at 6:51 PM, Kyle Nitzsche
<kyle.nitzsche@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> With bzr revision 52, I changed the table of contents design (as a working
> idea) so that it look like one.
>
> That is, it has chapters on the left, then leader dots, then page number on
> the right.
>
> This involved using the tocloft pkg and removing some seemingly unused code
> in ubuntu-developer-manual.cls.

The table of contents (TOC) was designed the way it was because it's
easier to use that way.  You're not summing up a column of numbers;
you're trying to locate the page number where the chapter/section
begins.  The reason you used leaders was because otherwise your eye
would find it difficult to track across the entire width of the page
to locate the proper page number.  So the leaders are a poor
work-around.

Your design now leads to the reader to naturally group the pages
numbers together in a column and the section headings together in a
separate column.  This is the opposite effect that you want in a table
of contents.

Robert Bringhurst says it better than I in his _The Elements of
Typographic Style_:

"Lists, such as contents pages and recipes, are opportunities to build
architectural structures in which the space between elements both
separates and binds. The two favorite ways of destroying such an
opportunity are setting great chasms of space that the eye cannot leap
without help from the hand, and setting unenlightening rows of dots
(dot leaders, they are called) that force the eye to walk the width of
the page like a prisoner being escorted back to its cell."

I much prefer the original layout.  Though, if you have specific
arguments against them, I'm happy to discuss them and try to find a
good solution.

--Kevin