Yes, Wolfgang, that corrects the minor problem of including the author name correctly, even when there is no year range. Thank you.

But since I use \title, not \chapter, for the frontmatter items, ( Foreword, Preface, A note on Contributors), the ChapterListCommand clearly does not apply, so currently my ToC looks as follows (leaving out the pg numbers which correctly align right):

                    Foreword

                    A. Uthor

                           Preface

                    A. Uthor

                            A note on contributors

Chapter One        Year range

                   A. Uthor

What I want is for 'Foreword', 'Preface' and 'A note on Contributors' to align flushleft with Chapter One, but with author names still where they should be (Foreword and Preface have authors, 'A note...' does not have an author).

So I tried creating a TitleListCommand which copies the ChapterListCommand. But where I run into difficulties then is with a new lot of \setuplist to accommodate that. There are three different labels involved (Foreword, Preface, and A note on Contributors).

And why is it that even with the current setup, 'Foreword' has aligned with author name, not with 'Preface' and 'A note...'? All three are \title, after all.

All in all this is a most complicated ToC! What I need is for the ToC to look like I show it below, and you will note the additional complication of Chapter Two which does not have an author, but instead it is the SECTIONS in the Chapter that have authors!

I'm sure if I can get on top of all this somehow, no future ToC is ever going to cause me problems! The body of the book is all looking good, all 300 pages of it. It is just the automatically produced ToC that is causing the headaches.

Foreword                    A. Uthor			pg no.

Preface                     A. Uthor			"

A note on Contributors                                  "

Chapter One                 Chapter Title

                            A. Uthor                    "
Chapter Two                 Chapter title
A section                   Context
                            A. Uthor                    "
Another section             Reflection
                            A. Author                   "

So what I have below as an MWE is fundamentally what you gave me (I have left out the correctly working ChapterListCommand), altered for \title, but I haven't got the setups below correct because I don't know how to do it. I have replaced unknowns with a question mark!

And at the moment I have nothing for the 'sections' with authors I need for Chapter Two. I assume I would set up a third definition called \SectionListCommand. Sections will have different labels too - one will be called 'Context', the other 'Reflection'.

\define[3]\TitleListCommand
{\hbox\bgroup
     \hbox to 3cm{\currentlistsymbol\hss}% number + labeltext
     \vtop\bgroup
       \hsize\dimexpr\makeupwidth-3cm\relax
       \doifsomething{\rawstructurelistuservariable{year}}
         {{\it\structurelistuservariable{year}}\crlf}%
       \currentlistentrytitle % title
       \doifsomething{\rawstructurelistuservariable{author}}
         {\crlf{\structurelistuservariable{author}}}%
       \hfill\currentlistentrypagenumber % pagenumber
     \egroup
   \egroup}

\setuplist
[chapter]
[label=chapter,
alternative=command,
   command=\ChapterListCommand]

\setuplist
[title]
[label=?,
alternative=command,
   command=\TitleListCommand]

\setuplabeltext
[en]
[chapter={\bf Chapter }]

\setuplabeltext
[en]
[title={\bf ? }] %There needs to be three different labels

....

Julian

On 6/9/20 5:36 pm, Wolfgang Schuster wrote:

jbf schrieb am 06.09.2020 um 02:03:

Thanks Wolfgang, while I don't pretend to fully understand the setup you have provided (but am working on doing so!), of course it provides the correct result for a chapter that has a title, an author, and a year.

My ever-so-complicated book (and its authors!) however, throws one small further complication into the mix.

Where a chapter does not have a year-range, and I either omit that declaration, or I leave the curly brackets empty (e.g. year={}), then I find that the author name also does not appear in the ToC. What adjustment to the \ChapterListCommand do I need to make to accommodate the following? Possibly an \else statement, but not sure how to include that:

\startchapter [title={Chapter title}] [author={Author Name}]

I forgot to change the argument for the check off the author entry, this should fix it.

\define[3]\ChapterListCommand
{\hbox\bgroup
     \hbox to 3cm{\currentlistsymbol\hss}% number + labeltext
     \vtop\bgroup
       \hsize\dimexpr\makeupwidth-3cm\relax
       \doifsomething{\rawstructurelistuservariable{year}}
         {{\it\structurelistuservariable{year}}\crlf}%
       \currentlistentrytitle % title
       \doifsomething{\rawstructurelistuservariable{author}}
         {\crlf{\bf\structurelistuservariable{author}}}%
       \hfill\currentlistentrypagenumber % pagenumber
     \egroup
   \egroup}

Wolfgang