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From: zjdg11@hou.amoco.com (Jim Graham)
Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
Subject: TeXnical question
Message-ID: <1991Jun19.125224.19855@hou.amoco.com>
Date: 19 Jun 91 12:52:24 GMT
Sender: news@hou.amoco.com
Organization: Amoco
Lines: 53
Originator: zjdg11@earth

I've been working on setting up a macro within my standard macro collection
that would (in plain TeX) create a table of contents as the file is processed.

a file, referred to by \contentsfile , is opened, and when various heading
macros are called, they write the heading, etc., and the current pageno to
the file.

The macros look something like this:

\def\mainheading#1{\goodbreak
    \centerline{\subtitles\uppercase{#1}} \par
    \ifcontents
       \immediate\write\contentsfile{|countitem \uppercase{#1} |dotfill \folio}
       \immediate\write\contentsfile{}
    \fi
    }

Note, when the table of contents is pulled in, "|" is defined as an escape
char, just like \ normally is.  I had to do this because I couldn't figure
out how to print the "\" to the file as such (if someone can help there as
well, I'm all ears...or eyes, as the case may be  ;-)  ).

If I call this as \mainheading{foo} I'll end up with something like
   |countitem FOO |dotfill 42

Most of the time, this works out to be correct.  HOWEVER, and this is where
I need some assistance, if it just so happens that the heading WAS going to
be written in at the bottom of the page (with the paragraph starting at the
top of the next page) before the \goodbreak fixed that, TeX still lists the
page number for that section as being the previous page, when in fact it has
been moved into the next page.

Now, I'm sure there's something stupid that I'm missing....but....

I'm kinda looking for 2 things here.  First, I'd really like to know how
to fix this situation.  Second, if someone can point me to the right page
numbers in The TeXbook to learn more about this situation, I'd love to hear
it.

Thanks in advance,
   --jim

Standard disclaimer....These thoughts are mine, not my employer's.

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