sectioning
I’m looking for a way (or a package) to change or control the formatting of the numbers of a section. By formatting, I mean the fonts and the like, not the formatting of the number
As far as I can see, the only way seems to redefine the @sect command, for example. But I’d prefer to avoid this: as you can see, I’m not a TeX expert.
I'm sure there is some package that does this, but the simplest way is to redefine the \thesection command:
\renewcommand\thesection{\color{red}\arabic{section}}
or if you also want the chapter number:
\renewcommand\thesection{\color{red}\thechapter.\arabic{section}}
Similar commands work for \thechapter, \thesubsection, etc.
EDIT: A maybe unintended side effect of this is that it also color every reference to the section. To just change it in the section header you can use
\makeatletter
\renewcommand\@seccntformat[1]{\color{red} {\csname the#1\endcsname}\hspace{0.5em}}
\makeatother
In any case you might want to have a look at section 2.2 of the LaTeX Companion and the titlesec package.
To control the level up to which sectional units will be numbered, you can use \setsecnumdepth{<sectional unit>}; to color the sectional unit numbers, you can use \setsecnumformat:
\documentclass[openany]{memoir}
\usepackage{xcolor}
\setsecnumformat{\color{blue}\csname the#1\endcsname\quad}
\setsecnumdepth{subsubsection}
\begin{document}
\chapter{Foo}
\section{blah}
\section{stuff}
\subsection{more stuff}
\subsubsection{even more stuff}
\end{document}
Best Answer
For extensive changes to the sectional titles,
titlesecis the package to go. For less extensive changes, you can go with internals.The last token in the second argument to
\setformatcan take an argument, like in the example for\subsubsection.