Re: table of contents and numbers

[Nick Dokos <nicholas.dokos@hp.com>]

Julian Burgos <julian@hafro.is> wrote:

> Dear list,
> 
> My apologies for another very basic question.  I'm wondering why I do 
> not get a table of contents when exporting the following file as pdf
> 
> ---start org file -----------
> #+TITLE: Test
> #+OPTIONS:  toc:t num:nil
> 
> * Part 1
> Some text
> 
> * Part 2
> Some more text
> ---end org file -----------
> 
> I do get the TOC when exporting as hmtl, though.
> 

I believe it's because of a rather technical latex limitation: latex
writes TOC entries into a .toc file, which is then read back in when the
\tableofcontents macro is expanded. When you specify num:nil asking for
unnumbered sections, the latex exporter produces \section* markers,
instead of the standard \section markers. But when latex processes
those, it does not add anything to the .toc file. If org added a
\tableofcontents, you would get just the title and an empty TOC. In
order to prevent that, the latex exporter requires that both toc and num
be non-nil - see l.1487 ff in lisp/org-latex.el:

,----
|      ...
|      ;; table of contents
|      (when (and org-export-with-toc
| 		(plist-get opt-plist :section-numbers))
|        (funcall org-export-latex-format-toc-function
|                 ...))
`----

The HTML exporter does this "by hand", so to speak, so it is not as
constrained and can do the "right" thing.

Nick