Is there a way to indicate the different area elements prescribed by the geometry package?

Question

The geometry package prescribes areas such as header, footer, textarea, marginpar, etc. by using length variables such as tmargin, bmargin, headsep, etc.

When you do "Inspect Element" in your browser, hover over an HTML line, an HTML element is highlighted, visually indicating margins, padding, etc.

Is there a way to do the same thing in LaTeX?

Answer 1

One option using the layout package to get a diagram showing the relevant parts and their dimensions:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[a5paper,hmargin=2cm]{geometry}
\usepackage{layout}
\begin{document}
\layout
\end{document}

Or, anothe approach using tikzpagenodes to get a visual demarcation of the relevant areas:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[margin=4cm]{geometry}
\usepackage{tikzpagenodes}
\begin{document}

\begin{tikzpicture}[remember picture,overlay]
\draw[blue,line width=2mm]
  (current page.south west)
  rectangle
  (current page.north east);
\draw[green]
  (current page text area.south west)
  rectangle
  (current page text area.north east);
\draw[yellow]
  (current page marginpar area.south west)
  rectangle
  (current page marginpar area.north east);
\draw[red]
  (current page header area.south west)
  rectangle
  (current page header area.north east);
\draw[orange]
  (current page footer area.south west)
  rectangle
  (current page footer area.north east);
\end{tikzpicture}

\end{document}

Another possibility is to use the layouts package:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[marginparwidth=1cm]{geometry}
\usepackage{layouts}

\begin{document}

\currentpage
\oddpagelayouttrue
\pagedesign

\end{document}