How to customize outline

[cafeclimber]

Hi, just started attempting to write a template based on my university's dissertation requirements.

Looking at outline, I'm struggling to understand how to customize it really in any way. My first thought of a workaround was to simply only call the outline on specific portions I want separated by vertical space, however I then struggled to understand using a function in the target argument. Any thoughts?

As an example of the workaround, something like

heading(outlined: false)[Table of Contents]
outline(title: none, indent: true, target: /* Front Matter */)
v(12pt)
outline(title: none, indent: true, target: /* Chapters */)
v(12pt)
outline(title: none, indent: true, target: /* Back Matter */)
pagebreak()

Ideally we could have more granular control in a show? Or if that's already possible, perhaps better documentation on customizing in this way.

(On another note, it might be good to state in the outline documentation that things can be hidden from the outline in the heading function. Took me a bit to find)

[LaurenzV]

Do you maybe have a picture of what you want the outline to look like in the end?

[cafeclimber]

Yeah so something like

List of Figures......................................ii
List of Tables.......................................iii
Acknowledgements ....................................iv

Chapter 1. Introduction .............................1
    Section title....................................1
    Other section....................................4
        Subsection...................................5

Chapter 2. Other stuff ..............................8
    Section title....................................9

Appendix A: Bits.....................................15

Appendix B: Bobs.....................................20

i.e. group front matter, then chapters and appendices etc single space in each individual context, but double space between them

[laurmaedje]

The outline is indeed not really customizable right now. You can write your own outline with query and do whatever there, but making the built-in outline easier to style is certainly something we should and will do.