Some document elements (e.g., figures in the book
class) are numbered per chapter (figure 1.1, 1.2, 2.1, …). How can I achieve continuous numbering (figure 1, 2, 3, …)?
And vice versa: Some document elements (e.g., figures in the article
class) are numbered continuously. How can I achieve per-section numbering?
\documentclass{book}% for "vice versa" variant, replace `book` with `article`
\begin{document}
\chapter{foo}% for "vice versa" variant, replace `\chapter` with `\section`
\begin{figure}
\centering
\rule{1cm}{1cm}% placeholder for graphic
\caption{A figure}
\end{figure}
\end{document}
Bonus question: Is it possible to adjust the numbering of the sectioning headings themselves? Can I, e.g., switch from per-chapter to continuous numbering of sections in the book
class?
Best Answer
Changing the numbering of (e.g.) figures involves two modifications:
Redefining whether or not the
figure
counter will be reset whenever the chapter/section counter is incremented;Redefining the "appearance" of the
figure
counter (\thefigure
), i.e., removing (or adding) the chapter/section prefix.Standard solution:
\counterwithout
The standard solution – which deals with modifications 1 and 2 mentioned above – is to use the
\counterwithout
and\counterwithin
commands.Since October 2018 the commands are in the LaTeX kernel; for earlier releases one needs
\usepackage{chngcntr}
The following example shows how to achieve continuous figure numbering in the
book
class:Conversely, here's how to achieve per-section figure numbering in the
article
class:It works the same way for (e.g.) tables, custom-defined floats, equations, and footnotes. (Note that in many document classes featuring the
\chapter
command, footnotes are numbered per chapter even though thefootnote
counter does not show the chapter prefix.) The commands may also be used for theorem environments; it is easier, though, to specify the numbering of a new theorem environment when defining it:You may also customize the numbering of the sectioning headings themselves. To, say, accomplish continuous numbering of sections in the
book
class (by default, those are numbered per chapter), but per-part numbering of chapters (which are by default numbered continuously), your preamble should containTo influence the resetting of counters without changing their appearance, use the starred macro versions
\counterwithout*
and\counterwithin*
. E.g., for per-section numbering of figures in thearticle
class – but without attaching a section prefix to\thefigure
–, add the following to your preamble:It is also possible to redefine a counter's resetting and appearance any number of times in the document body. Note that
\counterwithout
,\counterwithin
and their variants won't affect the counter's current value; to change the latter, use\setcounter{<counter>}{<new value>}
.AMSmath solution
The AMS classes and the
amsmath
package feature the\numberwithin
macro which matches\counterwithin
. However, there is no AMS equivalent to\counterwithout
. Usage example:\numberwithin{equation}{section}
. See the full example by cmhughes. If you use math, you may prefer loadingamsmath
anyway and using\numberwithin
.Other solutions
The
caption
package features the key–value optionsfigurewithin
andtablewithin
which allow to change the numbering of (surprise) figures and tables. Permitted option values arechapter
,section
, andnone
. (For the first code example above, this translates into\usepackage[figurewithin=none]{caption}
.)The
listings
package uses\AtBeginDocument
to define thelstlisting
counter of the environment of the same name. To turn off the environment's per-chapter numbering for classes that feature\chapter
, issue\lstset{numberbychapter=false}
in the document preamble. To enable per-section numbering for classes without\chapter
, add the following to your preamble: