[Tex/LaTex] Plain TeX: running header with section name

header-footerplain-texsectioning

I want to create a TeX document with sections and a running header containing the name of the current section. I know I can use \mark{} to mark the section headings and then use \topmark or \firstmark to show the section name in my header. The problem is that neither \topmark nor \firstmark do what I want (they're actually more suitable for typesetting dictionaries).

I would like the header to reflect the section the contents of which appear at the very top of the current page. In other words, I want to use mostly \topmark, but when a new section begins on the current page before any other text before it, I want to use \firstmark (or, alternatively, leave the header blank), because then \topmark refers to the previous section and thus is irrelevant. Any ideas on how I could do that?

Best Answer

Usually the first page in a document has no header; if it's needed for some special application, one can say

\ifnum\pageno=1 \firstmark\else\topmark\fi

in the code for producing the header.

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] How to hide header only in first page of each section with fancyhdr

I'm not sure what do you mean by empty but if you are looking for the normal layout without the text of the header you can add this pagestyle to your preamble:

\fancypagestyle{FooBar}{%
    \fancyhead{}
    \renewcommand{\headrulewidth}{1pt}
}

and then start your sections by declaring

\section{Second Section}\thispagestyle{FooBar}

This will give you

enter image description here

If you literally need an empty layout, you can use \thispagestyle{empty} as it is already defined by the package (an other predefined style is plain).

[Tex/LaTex] How to insert the section name into the header

It is not necessary to use the packages sectsty, parskip and fancyhdr together with a KOMA-Script class.

This classes define the two commands \setkomafont and addtokomafont to change the font of the different elements in a document.

The class option parskip can be used to get a parskip instead of a parindent.

Headers and footers can be set by the package scrlayer-scrpage or the older scrpage2. Both are part of the KOMA-Script bundle.

The KOMA-Script classes have a special command for unnumbered section headings producing an entry in the page header and an entry in the table of contents: \addsec. Use this instead of \section*.

For further Information have a look at the KOMA-Script documentation.

\documentclass[parskip]{scrartcl}
\usepackage[letterspace=150]{microtype}

\usepackage[automark]{scrlayer-scrpage}% or alternativly scrpage2  
\pagestyle{scrheadings}
\clearscrheadfoot
\chead{\headmark}
\setkomafont{pagehead}{\normalfont\bfseries}

\usepackage{blindtext}% dummy text

\begin{document}
\addsec{sect.name.1}
\subsection*{sub.sect.name.a}
\Blindtext[10]
\subsection*{sub.sect.name.b}
\addsec{sect.name.2}
\end{document}

enter image description here

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] How to hide header only in first page of each section with fancyhdr

[Tex/LaTex] How to insert the section name into the header

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