TOC in Master Document does not work

[pocketom]

I added a title page and a TOC to my master document template. The TOC is not generated, also no model documents are included if a TOC is present in master page.

One of the many RTFGenerator bugs?

[Fred Bevan]

I had a bit of trouble with that too. Rather than take the time to figure out the reason for the problem I modified a copy of one of the Sparx samples that was working.

Hopefully someone will have a better answer but in the mean time, this should give you a way to create the report.

[pocketom]

Tried that too. At the beginning it worked, but than the trouble started here too. I just used the regular functions, no hacking or something else. Even reinstalling EA didn't bring it back. Trying older/newer versions also not. If this crap is burnt-in once in your model, it's there.

Unusable, sorry.

Here some citements from EA's marketing team:

"Creating a Rich Text Format (RTF) document is a simple and flexible process. "
http://www.sparxsystems.com/uml_tool_guide/reporting_in_enterprise_architect/createarichtextdocument.htm

"Producing high quality documentation in Enterprise Architect is simplicity itself. Documentation can be produced in the MS Word compatible .RTF format in a matter of seconds or minutes, with a simple procedure."
http://www.sparxsystems.com.au/resources/rtf/rtf_generation.html

Parody. Pure parody. (Of course I'm just too stupid)

[skiwi]

I feel your pain. And I think the documentation you quote is hopelessly optimistic.

A couple of notes that may help though.

If all else fails exporting to word (ie a very recent version), making the changes, and then importing back over may help.

Document generations is very very sensitive to minute variations in styles.
I'm note sure if it is a bug in Word or EA, but each model document includes its own styles (from the template), and Word accepts this, even if the styles have the same name.

IMHO EA should only generate the styles once for a document. (and take the first instance of a style where they differ).

You may get good mileage by being pernickety and ensuring all your templates are based on exactly the same normal.rtf, and have exactly the same styles defined in them. (Note this may be humanly possible, but probably is neither simple or flexible)

[pocketom]

Right, that's exactly my experience. I tried to create all documents from the Normal.RTF, but what if you want to change a certain style? As I wrote in another thread, the functionality 'reloading all styles from Normal.RTF' does also not work properly.

So, do I really have to recreate all templates from scratch once I want to change a global style element? In general, how should this cope with UML philosophy in general?

Anyway, I still don't know how to put a TOC at the beginning of a (master) document so that all model document content below (>1 model documents...) integrates into the same TOC which is located at at the beginning of the output document (or is this usecase about to be unusual)

[skiwi]

Re ToC, this is a known bugfeature, where the ToC appears to get dropped if the template in which it is declared does not have at least one 'heading' style.
(tried to find a reference for this but failed, - but a number of forum posts on ToCs)
You might find this useful.

[pocketom]

OK, thanx! So I need to add a heading and format it with #FFFFFF color to make it invisible on white ground... stupid, but simple. Or I format the "Table of Contents" Header above the TOC itself with a heading. Not very convincing, but working for now.

[Happy]

I myself encountered similar problems and ended up always to use a working EA Template for my purposes.

But to add at least one chapter to the master is required by our company templates, luckily.

However using master templates can get very frustrating.

Actually we still haven't found "our way" through to a stable rtf template workflow.

Cheers,
H.

[AlanT]

My TOC, which once worked, is always generated incorrectly now.  I have to right click and update it every time.  Not sure how that happened!

              Alan

[Happy]

Are you using master and document templates?
Or just a document template?

Maybe you've changed the style of one of the headings inconsistently over your template(s), thats one of the reasons for a corrupt TOC.

[AlanT]

   I`m using a document template.  I`ll have to check into that.

   What is a master template, anyway?  Is that for combining multiple documents?

                   Thanks, Alan

[Happy]

With a master document you can combine several model documents to be generated into on RTF.

For each model document you can specify individual template.

For the master document you specify a master template, wich overrides the other templates in case of styles, header, footer and page layout.

That's the theory.

[pocketom]

Code: [Select]

However using master templates can get very frustrating.

Actually we still haven't found "our way" through to a stable rtf template workflow.Exact the same situation for us! The sad thing is that the management will perhaps drop EA out of our projects - or even limit the scope it can be used for. At the end documents that are accessible for all stakeholders matter, even if your use-cases and entities and all the stuff is modelled very nicely. If you can read it only with a specialist tool or export too much manually, it's worth more or less nothing.  

[Happy]

Actually we just found a proper solution.

Will use the Master template approach of EA from now on only to create a structured RTF with the model element documentation.
The style is almost complying with our standards. As far as we can go with EA without spending too much  and useless efforts:
things like TOC or Table of Tables are skipped now within EA, even we can ignore the Times New Roman font or any other problems ocurring when trying to create a special table layout


Afterwards this generated rtf is imported to a Word document and its contents are formatted to comply with our document standards by a simple bunch of word macros.