Changing distance between chapter number and chapter title in the table of contents
The tocstyle
package (included in KOMA-script) by default automatically calculates the needed indentation for chapter and other sectioning numbers in the ToC. (It needs several LaTeX runs to do so.)
\documentclass{report}
\usepackage{tocstyle}
\usetocstyle{standard}
\begin{document}
\tableofcontents
\setcounter{chapter}{5000}
\chapter{foo}
\end{document}
You could use the titletoc package (which is a companion for titlesec
).
From the titlesec
/titletoc
manual page 18:
[Edit: titlesec
/titletoc
manual page 17:]
\titlecontents{<section>}[<left>]{<above>}
{<before with label>}{<before without label>}
{<filler and page>}[<after>]
[See also The titlesec, titleps, and titletoc Packages (2016 Mar 21) pp.14, 16 (which provides a similar \titlecontents
command option).]
Example:
\documentclass[a4paper]{book}
\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage{titletoc}
\usepackage{blindtext}
\titlecontents{chapter}[1.5em]{\addvspace{1pc}\bfseries}{\contentslabel{5em}}{}
{\titlerule*[0.3pc]{.}\contentspage}
\begin{document}
\tableofcontents
\blinddocument
\end{document}
If you are satisfied with the normal typesetting of the book class, you can do with "minimal" effort:
\usepackage{etoolbox}
\makeatletter
\patchcmd{\l@chapter}{1.5em}{2em}{}{}
\makeatother
You may also have a look at the memoir class, which must be considered for a 100+ chapter project; it has tools for customizing every aspect of a book, for example
\setlength{\cftchapternumwidth}{2em}
would suffice.