I am having a hard time trying to figure out the difference between \leftmark
and \rightmark
in fancyhdr
. At page 8 of the documentation, it says
The
\leftmark
contains the Left argument of the Last\markboth
on the page, the\rightmark
contains the Right argument of the fiRst\markboth
or the only argument of the fiRst\markright
on the page.
However, I could not find the definition of \markboth
. Could anyone please teach me of the difference or definition of \leftmark
and \rightmark
?
My though is, based on my use of fancyhdr
, \leftmark
writes chapter number and name if chapters exist, if not, it will write section number and name instead. As for \rightmark
, it will always write the title one level lower than that of \leftmark
.
Thank you in advance!
Best Answer
The primitive
\mark
stores one piece of data. The latex commands\markright
and\markboth
splits the argument of\mark
to be able to store two things. So\markboth{left 1}{right 1}
does more or less\mark{{left 1}{right 1}}
\markright{right 2}
retrieves the left part of the previous mark and then stores it together with the new right content. So it does (again more or less)\mark{{left 1}{right 2}}
.The stored contents can be retrieved (only in the header and footer, at other places the result is not reliable!) with
\leftmark
and\rightmark
.As the names indicates the commands retrieve the left and right part respectivly:
\leftmark
gets the left part of the last mark on the page,\rightmark
the right part of the first mark on the page (or the last on the previous page).With normal setups you get these marks