[texhax] How do I find out what my page layout defaults are?

[Steve Schwartz]

Mark,

On Fri, 2010-04-23 at 14:31 +0100, Mark Woodard wrote:
> "I would like to know the margin measurements as well as the font,
> including the size used for Chapter title, solutions, section labels,
> and header/footers." 

The margins and such are easy:

typeset the following (your preamble fragment plus 4 lines)

\documentclass[twoside]{book} 
\usepackage[margin=1in,twoside]{geometry}
\usepackage{fancyhdr} 
\pagestyle{fancy}
\fancyhf{}
\fancyhead[LE,RO]{\thepage}
\fancyhead[RE]{\leftmark}
\fancyhead[LO]{\rightmark}

\usepackage{layout}
\begin{document}
\layout
\end{document}

which will result in a document that has pictures that show the various
lengths and their values.

I don't know of something similar to show the font sizes, but if you
look at the log file when you typeset the above you will see what class
file(s) were used, e.g.,

(/usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/base/book.cls
Document Class: book 2005/09/16 v1.4f Standard LaTeX document class
(/usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/base/bk10.clo))

The book.cls file defines all the formatting in terms of latex font
sizes, e.g.:

\newcommand\section{\@startsection {section}{1}{\z@}%
                                   {-3.5ex \@plus -1ex \@minus -.2ex}%
                                   {2.3ex \@plus.2ex}%
                                   {\normalfont\Large\bfseries}}

tells you that the section head will be in the normal font, using
boldface, and size Large. Then bk10.clo tells you what Large means for
the 10pt book class (10pt is the default):

\newcommand\Large{\@setfontsize\Large\@xivpt{18}}

So Large is 14pt (set on 18pt baselines). This is a bit more digging
than you might like, but it should give you everything you need.

If you're in any doubt, just add a few test lines to the empty document,
e.g.

\section{Section Head}

\bf{\Large{Large font}}

and compare the two lines for size.

HTH

Steve

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