Redefining sectioning commands

Question

I'm trying to redefine the \subsubsection of the report class to behave like \paragraph and not have a linebreak after the title.

It's closely related to this question but I have no idea how to extrapolate the reverse effect from it.

I tried to get the code for paragraph using \show\paragraph and redifining \subsubsection with it as follows, but although it does compile, it doesn't work when I try to use it.

\renewcommand{\subsubsection}{\long macro :->\@startsection{subsubsection}{4}{\z@ }{3.25ex \@plus 1ex \@minus .2ex}{-1em}{\normalfont \normalsize \bfseries}}

I'm would like to know how to solve my original problem, but now, I'm also curious as to what I did wrong with that \renewcommand since it seems to me like I'd encounter it again with other problems I'd try to solve by modifying how latex does its thing.

MWE:

\RequirePackage[l2tabu, orthodox]{nag}
\documentclass[12pt]{report}

\usepackage{listings}

\def\thesection{\Roman{section}}
\def\thesubsection{\thesection.\Alph{subsection}}
\setcounter{secnumdepth}{2}

%\renewcommand{\subsubsection}{\long macro :->\@startsection{subsubsection}{4}{\z@ }{3.25ex \@plus 1ex \@minus .2ex}{-1em}{\normalfont \normalsize \bfseries}}

\begin{document}

\chapter{Chapter 1}
\label{c:c1}

\section{Section 1}
\label{s:s1}

\subsection{Subsection 1}
\label{ss:ss1}

\subsubsection{\lstinline{<Upper|Lower> Triangular}} defines a triangular matrix ...

\end{document}

Use the titlesec package to (re-)define macros like that. See Defining custom sectioning commands. — Martin Scharrer, Jul 07 '11 at 20:34
Also the \long macro :-> is part of the \show output and not part of the definition, i.e. you should delete it. — Martin Scharrer, Jul 07 '11 at 20:35
@Martin: Sorry, I saw your second comment only after I posted my answer. — Michael Ummels, Jul 07 '11 at 20:43
@Martin: I saw the titlesec package in the question I linked, and I guess I could (should?) have looked deeper into that packages. But at this point, my curiosity on how to redefine the code won over practicality :-/ — Lexiel, Jul 07 '11 at 20:55

score 10 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:35

The output of \show cannot be used as you are trying. It says that \subsection is a "long" macro that has no arguments and the replacement text is what follows ->.

The right place where to look is report.cls, where you find

\newcommand\subsubsection{\@startsection{subsubsection}{3}{\z@}%
                                     {-3.25ex\@plus -1ex \@minus -.2ex}%
                                     {1.5ex \@plus .2ex}%
                                     {\normalfont\normalsize\bfseries}}
\newcommand\paragraph{\@startsection{paragraph}{4}{\z@}%
                                    {3.25ex \@plus1ex \@minus.2ex}%
                                    {-1em}%
                                    {\normalfont\normalsize\bfseries}}

The key point that explain the different behavior are: the negative fourth argument of \@startsection for \subsubsection which suppresses indentation of the following paragraph; the positive fifth argument tells TeX that the title will not be "run-in". So

\makeatletter
\renewcommand\subsection{%
  \@startsection{subsubsection}{3}{\z@}{3.25ex \@plus1ex \@minus.2ex}%
  {-1em}{\normalfont\normalsize\bfseries}}
\makeatother

The second argument to \@startsection tells LaTeX the level of the sectioning command for the purposes of secnumdepth and tocdepth and should stay 3.

Important note

The \makeatletter and \makeatother commands are necessary because we are doing stuff involving the internal command of LaTeX.

Every time a command containing @ in its name has to be used, the code must either be in a .sty file or surrounded by that pair. See What do \makeatletter and \makeatother do? for more information.

To see the definition you can also use texdef -t latex -c report subsubsection paragraph (or latexdef instead texdef -t latex if that symlink is installed). However, looking into the source file directly has the benefit that you see the code as it was formatted by the author. — Martin Scharrer, Jul 07 '11 at 20:46
@Martin: but it uses the same output as \show. I think that the main part of my answer is to explain what went wrong to begin with. — egreg, Jul 07 '11 at 20:47
Thanks a lot for all the details, I'm now a little less ignorant in the ways of latex :) — Lexiel, Jul 07 '11 at 20:51
@egreg: Indeed (I actually added that to my comment while you were responding ;-) ). I just wanted to point the possibility out, nothing against the answer. — Martin Scharrer, Jul 07 '11 at 20:51

score 3 · Answer 2 · edited Jul 07 '11 at 20:46

3

\long macro :-> is not part of the definition of the macro, and you need to change the catcode of @ in the definition. The following should work:

\makeatletter
\renewcommand{\subsubsection}{\@startsection{subsubsection}{3}{\z@}%
  {3.25ex \@plus 1ex \@minus .2ex}{-1em}{\normalfont\normalsize\bfseries}}
\makeatother

edited Jul 07 '11 at 20:46

egreg

1,121,712

answered Jul 07 '11 at 20:37

Michael Ummels

8,604
3
36
27

score 0 · Answer 3 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:35

0

If you prefered not to do things manually, you can use the titlesec package whose usage is described in this question: Defining custom sectioning commands

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:35

Community

1

answered Jan 08 '13 at 22:41

yo'

51,322

Redefining sectioning commands

3 Answers3

Important note

Linked

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