[Tex/LaTex] Numbering sections, subsections etc manually

numberingsectioning

I want to number nested sections, subsections, paragraphs etc manually without using commands like \section{Section},\paragraph{Paragraph} like this:

1
1.1
1.1.1
…

How can I achieve that?

Best Answer

I'm not sure why you'd want to do this. Even more, I believe you shouldn't discharge the usual commands: if you don't like the appearance of section headings there's the package titlesec that allows for changing them.

Here I propose a \DIV macro that can be called with an optional argument and a mandatory argument for the subdivision level; the optional argument is the number to use (if not specified, just step the normal counter).

\usepackage{xparse}
\NewDocumentCommand{\DIV}{om}{%
  \IfValueT{#1}{\setcounter{#2}{\numexpr#1-1\relax}}%
  \csname #2\endcsname
}

Now you can call

\DIV[42]{section}{The answer to the fundamental question}

and the section will be numbered 42. If the next section is called with

\DIV{section}{Don't panic!}

it will be numbered 43.

Should you want to remove this manual numbering, just comment the \IfValueT line.

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] How to format sections/subsections/etc. like nested lists

Not really. In theory, the \section command could be rewritten to adjust the page layout, but that would not be fun. Also, it could be ambiguous, sometimes, where sections end. I recommend instead something like the following, where you redefine the section headings into environments and then change the margins with the changepage package. .

\documentclass[twoside]{article}
\usepackage{changepage,lipsum}
\newenvironment{h1}[2][]{\section[#1]{#2}}{}
\newenvironment{h2}[2][]{%
  \begin{adjustwidth}{2em}{}
    \subsection[#1]{#2}%
}{%
  \end{adjustwidth}
}
\newenvironment{h3}[2][]{%
  \begin{adjustwidth}{2em}{}
    \subsubsection[#1]{#2}%
}{%
  \end{adjustwidth}
}
\begin{document}
\begin{h1}{first}
  \lipsum[1]
  \begin{h2}{second}
    \lipsum[2]
  \end{h2}
  \begin{h2}{third}
    \lipsum[3]
    \begin{h3}{fourth}
      \lipsum[4]
    \end{h3}
  \end{h2}
\end{h1}
\end{document}

Changing the formatting of the section headings can be done, as you mention, with titlesec.

[Tex/LaTex] Numbering subsections in one section only

If you change the document class from article to book or report, your document works without error. The code in your question uses the \chapter command which is undefined in the article class. Try:

\documentclass{book}
\setcounter{secnumdepth}{-1}
\begin{document}
\tableofcontents
\chapter{mwe}
\section{unnumbered subsections}
\subsection{unnumbered}
\section{roman numbered subsections}
\setcounter{secnumdepth}{2}
\renewcommand{\thesubsection}{\textnormal{\roman{subsection}}.}
\subsection{roman one}
\subsection{roman two}
\setcounter{secnumdepth}{-1}
\chapter{Second chapter}
\section{unnumbered subsections}
\subsection{unnumbered}
\end{document}

Sometimes it's good to use \addtocounter instead of \setcounter, so you could raise or lower the numbering level without using the absolute value.

Also, as you can see, I used the counter value -1 for not numbering chapters, instead of 0.

In general, I think it's a bit inconsistent to change the numbering depth within a document.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] How to format sections/subsections/etc. like nested lists

[Tex/LaTex] Numbering subsections in one section only

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