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The description field in chapters seems limited to 2000 characters. #5308
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Originally created by @dom-breizh on GitHub (Jun 5, 2025).
Describe the feature you'd like
When mixing text and html links to create a working index for a very long chapter, I reached that limit.
Could this be made an editable variable in parameters - either global or per shelf ?
Describe the benefits this would bring to existing BookStack users
Some of my books have a lot of pages and internal and external references/links. Extending the limit of the description allows to create a usefull index. 2000 is simply not enough .
Can the goal of this request already be achieved via other means?
I did not find where to extend the desciption field.
Have you searched for an existing open/closed issue?
How long have you been using BookStack?
3 months to 1 year
Additional context
No response
@ssddanbrown commented on GitHub (Jun 5, 2025):
Hi @dom-breizh,
The limit is there to prevent chapters (and books and shelves) being used for content instead of pages which are the primary target for actual content. I'm not keen on extending this limit for what sounds like a somewhat edge-case unintended use of the description field, nor am I keen to add variables for platform limits without wider need.
What is the purpose of the index? Just wondering if there's a better approach there but not sure why it's needed.
If you did want to work around this on your own instance, the limits are set at a controller validation level, like here for example for Chapter updates:
1ea2ac864a/app/Entities/Controllers/ChapterController.php (L124)(Note: Changes to an instance may cause conflicts on update which would have to be handled or re-applied).
@wojosc commented on GitHub (Jan 24, 2026):
I am also just running into this problem. @ssddanbrown thank you for clarifying your thoughts on this. The reason why I am looking to create an index here is for readabilty mostly.
Looking at the book view, I do have the pages representing the index, but it uses a lot of space
If I were to have the index in the book description that would be a lot more compact and easier for the eye to quickly scan
When opening a chapter we get a kind of in between view. The view is helpful, but again everything is quite big and difficult for the eye to scan quickly.
The page then has a more compact view of the page structure which is going into the right direction. Followed by the Booknavigation seen in the chapter too
This is the index that I am working on and ran into the problem.
From my perspective it is quickly visible to where the differences are and how this last view has it's advantages.
For now I will create a sepearate index page to create the content of the page, I'm sure though, that that is not the ideal solution.
https://doku.phamos.eu/books/erpnext-benutzerhandbuch/page/einfuhrung-in-erpnext
Maybe something like an automated Index could be created similar to what we see in the left side bar on the page view. Maybe have this with a toggle/dropdown to show/hide?
or add it somewhere in this space to quickly catch the attention of the user?
Thank you for considering this input.