Indentation in TOC and Lists of Figures/Tables

Question

I am just starting to use Latex to write a university report. It does feel like a steep learning curve, and is at times frustrating, but I guess it is because I'm very new to it.

I got a question regarding TOC/figures/tables.

Basically, my document structure currently gets displayed in TOC as follows:

  Contributions *section*
  Summary *section*
  List of Figures *section*
  List of Tables *section*
1 Introduction *chapter*
  1.1 Background *section*
  1.2 Other Section *section*
2 Other Chapter *chapter*

However, I'd like it to be displayed like this:

Contributions
Summary
List of Figures
List of Tables
1 Introduction
  1.1 Background
  1.2 Other Section
2 Other Chapter

Notice, that the first four unnumbered sections are not indented, but keep the indentation of numbered sections. Also, related to this question. I'd like my Lists of Tables/Figures to be NOT indented.

For example, instead of this:

List of Figures
   1. Caption ------------------------------------------ 4

Have this:

List of Figures
1. Caption --------------------------------------------- 4

Thanks for you help!

** EDIT (added more info)

Here is the minimal working example:

\documentclass[11pt]{report}

\usepackage{graphicx}

% Remove "Chapter" from title. No break between # and name.
\makeatletter
\renewcommand{\@makechapterhead}[1]{%
{\setlength{\parindent}{0pt} \raggedright \normalfont
\bfseries\Large\thechapter.\quad\ #1
}}
\makeatother

\begin{document}

\pagenumbering{roman}

\section*{Contributions}
\addcontentsline{toc}{section}{Contributions}

This is a contributions sections. 

\section*{Summary}
\addcontentsline{toc}{section}{Summary}

This is a summary section.

\cleardoublepage
\tableofcontents %TOC

\cleardoublepage
\listoffigures
\addcontentsline{toc}{section}{List of Figures} %List of Figures

\pagenumbering{arabic}
\chapter{Introduction}

Welcome to introduction chapter.

\section{Background}

This is a background section.\ref{capt}
\begin{figure}
\caption{Sample Figure.}
\label{capt}  %must be after caption
\end{figure} 

\end{document}

Answer 1

Ok, here is what I did.

As it was suggested by @Raphink, I used tocloft package. All of the sections that I wanted to be at the top level of my TOC (such as contributions, summary, references, etc) I included in TOC as parts. This is because I haven't found a way to adjust only certain sections without changing all sections in TOC. I also don't have any parts in my report, so it doesn't conflict with any existing items.

Then, in order to format them correctly (as regular sections, but with no indentation) I used the following:

\renewcommand{\cftpartfont}{\normalfont} % make parts look like sections in TOC
\renewcommand{\cftpartpagefont}{\normalfont}
\setlength{\cftbeforepartskip}{0pt} % remove spaces before and after chapters

It looks a little clumsy, so if someone knows a better solution, please post your reply.

As for LoF and LoT, I used the following:

\setlength{\cftfigindent}{0pt}  % remove indentation from figures in lof
\setlength{\cfttabindent}{0pt}  % remove indentation from tables in lot

Hope someone else finds it helpful!

Answer 2

There is an alternative solution for removing the default indentation in your list of figures / tables. This solution has the advantage of avoiding the tocloft package, which often disrupts the default formatting of the table of contents in unexpected ways. Try adding the following lines to your preamble:

\makeatletter
\renewcommand*\l@figure{\@dottedtocline{1}{0em}{2.3em}}% Default: 1.5em/2.3em
\let\l@table\l@figure
\makeatother