Question on how to configure a "Handbooks"-esque section

Drupal's Handbooks Page is not automatically generated. It is static (to the best of my knowledge) because it does not need to be dynamic. It not only links to individual books, but to specific nodes in those books. It is not a Tabe Of Contents, but a hand-picked list of topics.

If you are just wanting a table of contents, you can use this php snippet. (Use it in a page rather than a block).

--EDIT--
I stand corrected (see below). ;o)

Thanks, sepeck, for letting us see some of the wizardry going on behind the scenes!
--END EDIT--

- Corey

Drupal.org handbooks are actually five seperate books. The /handbooks page is a Page type node and uses a php script to pull the top level pages from each book to display the links and title's.

The two column list is done with css already set in the site's style.css theme.

<p>The Drupal handbooks offer  a complete reference for those interested in Drupal, both novice and experienced Drupal administrators, Drupal users and Drupal developers.</p>
<p>Each handbook  is &copy; copyright 2000-2006 by the individual contributors and can be used in accordance with the Creative Commons License, Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0.</p>
<?php
// Book nids and their titles
$books = array(1 => "About Drupal", 258 => "Installation and configuration", 257 => "Customization and theming", 316 => "Developing for Drupal", 14279 => "About Drupal documentation");

foreach ($books as $nid => $title) {
  print '<h2 style="clear: left;">'. l($title, 'node/'. $nid) .'</h2>';
  // Fetch first level children
  $result = db_query("SELECT DISTINCT b.nid, n.title FROM {book} b INNER JOIN {node} n ON b.vid = n.vid WHERE b.parent = %d AND n.moderate = 0 AND n.status = 1 ORDER BY b.weight ASC", $nid);

  // Output pretty two-column list
  $half = ceil(db_num_rows($result) / 2); $i = 0;
  $section = '<div class="column-left"><ul>';
  while ($page = db_fetch_object($result)) {
    $section .= '<li>'. l($page->title, 'node/'. $page->nid) .'</li>';
    $i++;
    if ($i == $half) { 
      $section .= '</ul></div><div class="column-right"><ul>';
    }
  }
  $section .= '</ul></div>';
  print $section;
}

/*
<ul>
  <li><a href="about">About Drupal</a></li>
  <li><a href="node/258">Installation and upgrading</a></li>
  <li><a href="node/257">Configuration and customization</a></li>
  <li><a href="contributors-guide">Developing for Drupal</a></li>
  <li><a href="node/14279">About Drupal documentation</a> </li>
</ul>
*/
?><br class="clear" /><!--break-->

-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
_{Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain}