Resources for designing a table of contents

Question

What various packages, example code, or examples of existing documents with available source code are available to assist one in:

This post and this one combined with a study of the titletoc package might get you started :) — cmhughes, Dec 17 '11 at 05:02
The document of tocloft package is a good start to learn. Then titletoc package. — Leo Liu, Dec 17 '11 at 05:18
This is also interesting: http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Table_of_Contents — Ho1, Aug 04 '15 at 06:28

score 46 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:35

This post is community wiki, everybody is invited to edit.

Packages

tocloft: provides many features for customizing the ToC and the and the ability to create new "Lists of ..."
titletoc: a companion for titlesec
tocbasic: offers basic features for managing table of contents and similar lists, for package authors and class writers, is part of the KOMA-Script bundle
tocstyle: provides many ways of customizing the ToC and such lists, still in development, is part of the KOMA-Script bundle
minitoc: for adding mini-tables-of-contents (minitocs) at the beginning of every chapter, part or section
tocbibind: can be used to add the ToC and/or bibliography and/or the index etc. to the table of contents
tocvsec2: gives control over section numbering and/or the entries in the table of contents on a section by section basis
etoc: (released a year after OP) claims a different approach than other toc packages. Instead of customizing an initial layout, you define "line-styles" for each toc level toc and can inject code for transitions between levels.

The memoir class provides features which are very similar to the capabilities of tocloft and tocbibind.

Click on an image to go to the source code and the explanation.

Here you have another question with som examples how-to-customize-the-table-of-contents-using-tikz — Ignasi, Dec 17 '11 at 15:55
Nice answer. What about alternating dots like in the TeXbook toc? — Ho1, Aug 04 '15 at 06:29