How to draw a simple but beautiful decorative head-rule?

Question

The picture shown below is the desired simple head-rule, but the rule width should be much thinner like 1pt.

enter image description here

Real one: enter image description here

So how to use Tikz or other packages to draw this kind of line as a headrule?

Or alternatively, suppose I have the vector pciture in pdf form, e.g head-rule.pdf, how can I include it for use of head-rule?

Do you insist on TikZ? There is psvectorian: http://melusine.eu.org/syracuse/pstricks/vectorian/ — yo', Feb 08 '13 at 12:50
there is also pgfornament http://tex.stackexchange.com/a/46401/3235 but Alain Mathes mentions a license problem in the comments. — percusse, Feb 08 '13 at 12:57

Ian Durham · Accepted Answer · 2013-02-10T04:07:16.287

17

Here is the aforementioned rule using tikz with the center dot set to 1 pt. In the updated version, I filled them in and extended them to slightly more than \textwidth. You can tweak the number I divided \textwidth by in order to shorten or lengthen it. Note that it looks better with both the \fill and the \draw commands together. Without the latter, the edges are not crisp enough. [Sorry for the delay in updating. I was digging out from a snowstorm.]

\begin{tikzpicture}
\fill (0,0) circle (1pt);
\draw (0.2,0) .. controls (0.2,0.075) and (1,0) .. (\textwidth/2,0);
\fill (0.2,0) .. controls (0.2,0.075) and (1,0) .. (\textwidth/2,0);
\draw (0.2,0) .. controls (0.2,-0.075) and (1,0) .. (\textwidth/2,0);
\fill (0.2,0) .. controls (0.2,-0.075) and (1,0) .. (\textwidth/2,0);
\draw (-0.2,0) .. controls (-0.2,0.075) and (-1,0) .. (-\textwidth/2,0);
\fill (-0.2,0) .. controls (-0.2,0.075) and (-1,0) .. (-\textwidth/2,0);
\draw (-0.2,0) .. controls (-0.2,-0.075) and (-1,0) .. (-\textwidth/2,0);
\fill (-0.2,0) .. controls (-0.2,-0.075) and (-1,0) .. (-\textwidth/2,0);
\end{tikzpicture}

To use this with fancyhdr just put the above code inside \chead{} in your preamble.

Here's the output:

enter image description here

edited Feb 10 '13 at 04:07

answered Feb 09 '13 at 01:27

Ian Durham

328

It's very close to the desired one. Can you make it as long as the \textwidth, and fill in with black color? – KOF Feb 09 '13 at 06:54
Just updated. Sorry for the delay in replying. Had to dig out from a snowstorm. – Ian Durham Feb 09 '13 at 22:10
that is Great. Could you please show a MWE for use of this line for headrule? – KOF Feb 10 '13 at 00:04
Do you specifically want an MWE that utilizes fancyhdr or are you trying to avoid fancyhdr? If you're using it, you can just stick the above code inside \chead{}. – Ian Durham Feb 10 '13 at 02:36
It worked, perfect. – KOF Feb 10 '13 at 10:47

How to draw a simple but beautiful decorative head-rule?

1 Answers1