Tableofcontents as actual table with borders and stuff

Question

Details:

• I want my \tableofcontents to actually appear as table
• i am using latex
• i traced what the command \tableofcontents does, and in the end,
  i found that the \contentsline macro chain do not save the \thechapter and \chaptername as different entities
• ... so, the modification of it to table seems difficult to me atm
• this is also mentioned in the manual of package^[a] tocloft at page 24)

For the purposes at hand it is generally impossible to treat the typesetting of a title and its number separately, as both are bundled into the <title> argument within \contentsline.

MWE

Minimum Working Examples (as asked here):

Default:

\documentclass{report}
\begin{document}
\tableofcontents
\chapter{First sdddsssss %
        sssssssssssssssssssss ssssssssssssss ssssssss sssssss %
        ssssssssss sssssssssss sssssssssssssss ssssss ssssssss %
        sssssssssssss sssssssss}
\chapter{Second}
\end{document}

Target

(well, somewhat! as the package tabularray, nice name, doesn't seem orthogonal in its implementation of functions to me, so, i am still unable to properly define all the things in it, but this will work)

\documentclass{report}
\usepackage{tabularray}
\begin{document}
%\begin{tblr}{| m{1em} | m{9cm} | m{2cm} |}
\begin{tblr}{| c | m{9cm} | m{2cm} |}
    \hline
    \bfseries thechapter & \bfseries chaptername & \bfseries comments \ 
    \hline
    1 & First sdddsssss %
    sssssssssssssssssssss ssssssssssssss ssssssss sssssss %
    ssssssssss sssssssssss sssssssssssssss ssssss ssssssss %
    sssssssssssss sssssssss & \ 
    \hline
    2 & Second & \ 
    \hline
\end{tblr}
\end{document}

PS:

On the orthogonality of tabularray:

I wanted to specify following options:

• horizontal arrangement (l,c,r)
• vertical arrangement (t,m,b,h,f)
  update: i think t,m,b concern with relative alignment of the specified base?lines of the columncells across their whole row; whereas h,f concern with the absolute alignment in individual cell
• columnwidth
• special vertical alignment for the header row
• row formatting for the header

Answer 1

The perfectly imperfect solution I used to get the toc in a table was:

(yes, changed format is intentional i.e. reduced the rules a bit, added chapter children and page numbers for completeness sake)

\documentclass{report}
% Table spanning pages
\usepackage{longtable}
\usepackage{ifthen}
% Vertically padded hlines or rules
% \usepackage{booktabs}
% Padded Rule
\newcommand{\prule}{\noalign{\smallskip}\hline\noalign{\smallskip}}
% Extract (.sty, \usepackage): Modify toc commands for table
\renewcommand{\numberline}[1]{#1 & }%\bfseries}
\def\contentsline#1#2#3#4{\gdef@contentsline@destination{#4}%
    \ifthenelse{\equal{#1}{chapter}}{\ \prule}{ \ }
    #2 & #3 &
}
\newcommand{\mytoc}{
    \begin{longtable}{  p{5mm} | p{6.5cm} | p{1cm} | p{2cm}  }
        % \toprule
        \bfseries sr & \bfseries chaptername & \bfseries pg & \bfseries comments
        \input{\jobname.toc} \
        % chktex "Command terminated with space" is wrong (VSCodium: LaTeX Workshop)
        % Do NOT use \prule{}
        \prule 
    \end{longtable}
}
\begin{document}
% Run this command to update the toc file, then recomment again
% \tableofcontents
\mytoc{}
\chapter{First sdddsssss %
    sssssssssssssssssssss ssssssssssssss ssssssss sssssss %
    ssssssssss sssssssssss sssssssssssssss ssssss ssssssss %
    sssssssssssss sssssssss}
\section{Child}
\section{Child}
\chapter{Second}
\end{document}

This is "perfectly imperfect" because:

• it works while nothing else did (hence perfect)
• indentation of sections need to be re-implemented too
• the packages dealing with toc modification like bookmark etoc etc likely won't work with this
• contents enteries no longer clickable/linked (hyperref package)

Note 2023.05.14:

• Disable auto "Clean" options in tex-related build tasks like in "LaTeX Workshop" extension in VSCodium (honestly though, if compiling in TXS, then extensions TeXLab and vscode-pdf are enough, just disable this stupid latex-workshop extension with stupid chktex)
  
  old point: though breeze in TeXStudio (TXS); but with latexmk and chktex in VSCodium, running \tableofcontents and commenting it out becomes arduous task. Tried with following inside \mytoc definition to avoid that, but none worked: \makeatletter\@starttoc{toc}\makeatother or Generating .toc file without generating a ToC

"latex-workshop.latex.autoBuild.run": "never",
"latex-workshop.latex.autoBuild.cleanAndRetry.enabled": false,

Changes since original answer:

• Fix (trailing vertical rule in end): Move the \makeat* pair outside the table
• Dev: Remove @ using command, hence also the \makeat* pair
• New (conditional¹ hlines): hline before chapter (todo: "logical or" with "part") to group children (*sections)
• New: Page column for completeness of answer for others
• New: \prule and \mytoc for ease of use

Any suggestions, bug fixes or improvements welcome

---

Footnotes:

^{[1]: I used the Wikibook pdf - which remains outdated. I later found via LaTeX conditional expression that 'obsolete ifthen package' - This same question is also indirectly linked via footnotes in the Wikibook on web.}

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P.S.: Aaaah, just found from md-advanced-help that

• language tags for syntax highlighting on SE are prefixed with "lang", hence becomes lang-<lang>
• which's different than github/gitlab's <lang> tag :confused:
• so, tex tags were ignored, rather, the lang-tex tag seems to be specified across this tex.se site... :facepalm:

Also, don't change the "Edit summary" to enable appending the changes to previous revision if allowed. This "appension" is likely constrained, so, doesn't work always.