header-footer
So I was searching through tex.stackexchange about headers, and I haven't seen this kind of topic.
I was thinking of including header in my thesis but I'm still not sure whether to do it or not.
Still regardless of my own issues, I was wondering do you guys, here on tex.stackexchange, have any preferred style or custom code to make your headers look nice and shiny 😀
So if you have, why not boast a bit, and in turn help someone out who might need it in the future 🙂
When I had acne on my face and was still in High School, I took a subject left over in the syllabus from the century before the last called spherical trigonometry. Now the interesting part of this course was its textbook. In order to read it, you had to wear a pair of paper glasses with a transparent red plastic color sheet and supposedly, when you looked at some figures they would spring into life and be transformed to 3D. They never did; even when we moved our heads into all sort of strange positions. The worst you couldn't read the figures with the naked eye either, as they were specially printed to be used with the glasses.
Your suggested embellishments to your Thesis margins or running heads reminded me of this. I don't think it is a good idea, especially in a Master Thesis. You can communicate the idea of motion of your visualizations perhaps on a page of 6-8 figures that have been drawn time-lapsed.
Think the equivalent of a microbiologist illustrating for example the growth of an amoeba over two days in a flip-book versus some time sequenced photos or diagrams. Now if anyone could come up with a flip-book that explains quantum mechanics that's another story.
Here's one possibility using the titlesec package: according to comments, the chapter number had to be removed. Also, there's no need to use the redefinition for \@makechapterhead; all formatting aspects can be modified/controlled in an easier way using \titleformat:
\documentclass{book}
\usepackage[explicit]{titlesec}
\usepackage{tikz}
\titleformat{\chapter}[display]
{\Huge\scshape}
{\filleft\tikz\node[fill=green!50!black!10,rectangle,rounded corners=6pt] (chap) {\chaptertitlename};}
{0ex}
{\colorbox{green!50!black!10}{\parbox{\dimexpr\textwidth-2\fboxsep\relax}{\vskip1ex#1\vskip1ex}}}
\begin{document}
\chapter{A Test Chapter}
\end{document}
For the second layout, you can do something like the following (I should mention that having the page number in the chapter heading seems a little strange):
\documentclass{book}
\usepackage[explicit]{titlesec}
\usepackage{tikz}
\titleformat{\chapter}[display]
{\Large\scshape}
{}{0ex}
{\colorbox{green!50!black!10}{\colorbox{green!50!black!20}{\parbox{1cm}{\thepage}}\parbox{\dimexpr\textwidth-2\fboxsep-1cm\relax}{\filcenter\vskip1ex\chaptername~\thechapter: #1\vskip1ex}}}
\begin{document}
\chapter{A Test Chapter}
\end{document}
After comments added to the original question, I think that now I know what was requested: the following example shows a modification of the formatting for chapter headings and also a modification to the headers achieved with the help of the fancyhdr package:
\documentclass[a4paper,12pt,oneside]{report}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\usepackage{xunicode}
\usepackage[explicit]{titlesec}
\usepackage{fancyhdr}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usepackage{lipsum}% just to generate filler text for the example
%----------------------------for changing the chapter format-------------------
\titleformat{\chapter}[display]
{\LARGE\scshape\bfseries}
{\filleft\tikz\node[fill=green!50!black!10,rectangle,rounded corners=6pt] (chap) {\chaptertitlename~\thechapter};}
{0ex}
{\colorbox{green!50!black!10}{\parbox{\dimexpr\textwidth-2\fboxsep\relax}{\vskip1ex#1\vskip1ex}}}
%----------------------------for changing the header-------------------
\fancyhf{}
\fancyhead[L]{\colorbox{green!50!black!10}{\parbox{\dimexpr\textwidth-2\fboxsep\relax}{\colorbox{green!50!black!40}{\thepage:} \leftmark}}}
\renewcommand\headrulewidth{0pt}
\setlength\headheight{24pt}
\pagestyle{fancy}
\renewcommand{\chaptermark}[1]{%
\markboth{#1}{}}
\makeatletter
\let\ps@plain\ps@empty
\makeatother
\begin{document}
\tableofcontents
\chapter {Intro}
\section {Another}
\lipsum[1-15]
\chapter {Two}
\section {History2}
\lipsum[1-15]
\end{document}
Best Answer
For mine I wanted to have the section name on even pages and the chapter name on odd pages. I am a huge fan of small caps; therefore I wanted it in small caps. Here is what I had