nisus.com

I'm an attorney and like to see the structure of my briefs in an outline. I'm trying to use TOC and the navigation pane, but my headings ares sometimes long, and because the text in the navigation pane does not seem to wrap, I have to resize the pane to the entire screen, and even then some of the text is sometimes cut off. Is there a fix for this, or a more efficient way to outline? This is one thing I miss from Word (although recent versions of Word have made outlining harder to use IMHO. How Microsoft of them.)

Any help with this much appreciated.

Cliff S.

I'm afraid I don't think there's anything you can do beyond extending the width of the TOC panel. Personally I'd hate it if TOC headings wrapped in the Navigator pane (and in testing, Word doesn't seem to wrap them either, but maybe I'm missing an option).

But we do have a feature request filed for NWP, that the user should be able to choose a font/size for the Navigator pane. A smaller and more compact font may solve your display needs. It looks like another filed feature request is that the Navigator should show tooltips when the TOC entry is too long to fit.

Replying to Martin: Why would you not want the TOC entries in the navi pane not to wrap (as long as they indented with a hanging indent)? As to Word not doing this, in the versions of Word that I am familiar with (and honestly considering going back to for this reason) you would not use TOC as an outliner: rather, you would click on the "outline view" icon and then be able to select different levels of your outline and text to view, as well as to work with by promoting, demoting, or editing items in the outline. For anyone working with large documents, especially legal ones, I can't tell you what an important feature this is. I hate the idea of going back to Word for it, but it just may be a deal breaker in Nisus for this user.

Sorry, Martin: I meant: "why would you not want the TOC entries in the navi page to wrap?"

Cliff S. wrote:Replying to Martin: Why would you not want the TOC entries in the navi pane to wrap (as long as they indented with a hanging indent)?

For me it's a great help (visually) if one line in the Navigator exactly equals one TOC paragraph in the document. Even if the entry in the Navigator wraps, a quick scan wouldn't tell me whether the next line was a wrapped line or simply a different entry at a deep nesting (higher level) in the TOC. Also, it's a personal preference, but I think short TOC/titles are clearer than longer ones. If I can't figure out the meaning of my own TOC entry by the first few words, I want to think of a better title.

But there's no harm in adding an option to allow users to choose whether their TOC entries wrap in the Navigator. I can file it as a feature request.

As to Word not doing this, in the versions of Word that I am familiar with (and honestly considering going back to for this reason) you would not use TOC as an outliner: rather, you would click on the "outline view" icon and then be able to select different levels of your outline and text to view, as well as to work with by promoting, demoting, or editing items in the outline. For anyone working with large documents, especially legal ones, I can't tell you what an important feature this is.

You can do all that with NWP's TOC Navigator. If you drag-drop to rearrange the TOC entries in the Navigator, the corresponding (nested) document content comes along for the ride. You can promote/demote the selected TOC entries by pressing Tab (or Shift + Tab), or using the menus Increase/Decrease Indent.