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Contents, sections and folding

A long book needs a way about it, and a way to put parts of it out of the way. Three tools in the reader’s header do that: the contents, the chapters and sections sheet, and folding.

1. The contents#

contents in the header, or C anywhere on the page, opens the table of contents: one row per paragraph, with its number and its opening words, grouped under its chapter and, where the book has them, its sections.

Type to filter.
The box at the top (filter by number or opening words) keeps only the paragraphs that match. You need not type the vowel marks of Persian or Arabic, nor mind the case: the filter ignores both. Enter jumps to the first match; ↓ and ↑ walk the matches.
Click a row
to jump there. The panel closes and the page scrolls to the paragraph — fetching its chapter first, if it has not arrived yet, and opening it if it is folded away (below). nothing matches says so when the filter finds nothing.
It is a tree.
Each chapter and each section has a ▾ that folds it shut and opens it again. fold all leaves the chapter names alone, to walk the book at that depth; open all opens everything. Nothing is folded when the page loads. What you fold stays folded when you close the contents and open them again, until you open it (or press open all) or reload the page. Typing in the filter opens everything, so a match is never left hidden inside something folded — and what it opened stays open when you empty the box again.
×
, Esc or a click outside close it.

A row is an ordinary link, so the paragraph’s address goes into the address bar — The reader says what that is good for.

2. Picking a part of the book#

Four sheets name a part of the book: what is folded away, where a section opens, what a recording covers (Adding a narration), and the stretch an LLM is to gloss (Glossing a stretch with an LLM). All four show the book the same way, as an outline. Its rows are the chapters, each with its name and how many paragraphs it has. A chapter opens (▸) on its sections and its paragraphs, each paragraph by its number and its first words, in the book’s own script. For a recording and for an LLM’s stretch, a paragraph opens on its subparagraphs too.

  • A click takes a whole thing: a chapter, a section or a paragraph. Click what is picked again to open it and go finer.
  • Shift-click another row to take everything from the first to it. On a phone, or without Shift, press stretch it to… and then pick where it ends.
  • What is picked is tinted, its two ends say from and to, and the line under the outline says it in words: chapter 2 · The Wind · 14 paragraphs, chapters 2–4 · 38 paragraphs, chapter 2, ¶ 3 → chapter 3, ¶ 1 · 5 paragraphs.
  • The box above the outline finds a paragraph by its number or by its words, and shows it where it is, under its chapter and its section. open all and close all open and close every chapter and section.
  • From the keyboard, the arrows walk the rows, and → and ← open and close them. Enter or Space picks, and with Shift they stretch. Esc lets a half-made stretch go, or empties the box, before it closes the sheet.

3. Chapters and sections#

sections… at the top of the contents — or the ✎ beside a chapter or a section in the tree — opens the chapters and sections sheet. Its first line counts what the book has (1 chapter, no sections in this book). Below it is the book as an outline (above): pick what you want to name. The sheet opens on the paragraph you are reading, or on what the ✎ stood beside.

A chapter’s name. Pick the chapter, type what it is called, and press name it (or Enter). The name is shown under the chapter’s number in the text and beside it in the contents. Leave the box empty and press the button to take the name away: the chapter is called by its number alone again.

A section. A section marks a place between two paragraphs: pick the paragraph it starts at, type its title, and press start a section here. It has no number of its own and changes no paragraph’s number — it is a heading in the text and a row in the contents, nothing more. A section already in the book is a row of the outline, § and its title. Picking it picks the paragraph it opens at, and offers rename this section and remove this section.

Both are written into the chapter’s own .tex file (as \chapname and \secmark), so they travel with the book when you download it. The reader is rebuilt at once; the heading and the rows of the contents are written at build time, so the answer says — reload to see it in the book and offers reload the reader. A refusal is shown whole, in the sheet, in its own words; from a page opened off the disk, nothing is written and the sheet says so.

Chapters and sections also matter to the narration: Wait at each new chapter (in the ⚙ panel) holds the playing at the start of each new chapter or section (Playing and listening).

4. Folding a run of paragraphs away#

fold in the header opens the folded away sheet, on the paragraph you are reading. Pick a run of paragraphs in the outline — a paragraph, a section, a chapter, or a stretch of them (Picking a part of the book) — and fold these away folds it:

  • their text is not shown; one bar stands in its place, saying how many paragraphs are folded (6 paragraphs folded away). Click it to show them here — the book keeps them folded, and the bar then says fold them away again;
  • reading walks past a folded run. With a narration the playing jumps from the subparagraph before the run to the first one after; with no narration the → and ← keys do the same. listen does it the other way round: it stops at the run, and the next press goes on after it (Playing and listening);
  • the sheet lists every run already folded, in words (chapter 2, ¶ 2 → chapter 3, ¶ 1 · 2 paragraphs; click it to see it in the outline), each with unfold. In the outline, a folded paragraph says folded. Two runs that meet become one.

Nothing is deleted, and the build knows nothing of it: the runs are kept in reading.json beside the book, which travels in its download, so it is the edition that is folded, not one machine’s view of it. A front matter, a dedication, an apparatus, a chapter you have read and do not want again — they go out of the way without a byte of the text being lost.

The sheet answers folded away or unfolded. The page folds at once, without a reload; the server also rebuilds the reader so that the next visit agrees, and if that rebuild fails the answer says so.

A reading place saved inside a run you have since folded is not a reason to unfold it: opening the book again goes to the bar standing where your place is.

An older book built before folding existed has no fold button: press rebuild the reader (or rebuild on its card) and it has one. The folds were never in the page anyway — they live in reading.json — so nothing is lost by rebuilding.