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Consider the following LaTeX document:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[footskip=0pt]{geometry}
\begin{document}
Hello, world!
\end{document}

This results in the following pdf rendering (the file's margins were trimmed in the preparation of the image):

nofoot option for geometry package

To the best of my understanding, supported by this comment by @Martin Scharrer, the footer's height is determined by the footskip option. However, observe that despite setting the footskip option to 0pt, a page number is visible. Doesn't the page number "live" inside the footer?

To press the latter point further, consider the following slightly modified version of the above document:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[footskip=-10pt,showframe]{geometry}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\begin{document}
\lipsum[1-7]
\end{document}

The pdf rendering of this document is as follows (again, the margins were trimmed in the preparation of the image):

<code>nofoot</code> with a negative <code>footskip</code>

The image shows that the baseline of the footer is strictly above the bottom of the textarea, and yet the page number appears below the textarea. So where does the page number live?

Evan Aad
  • 11,066

1 Answers1

2

There is no clipping done on the head or foot, the box is just overfull if you add content that does not fit

Use 

\pagestyle{empty}

if you want no text in the head and foot.

Note that \footskip is just a length register than holds a value that is just used to locally set the \baselineskip as the box with the footer is added. This means it is the target baseline to baseline spacing, but if it is too small then \baselineskip (and so \footskip is not used at all and \lineskip is used (which is 0pt here).

If you add \showbox to the original test document you see the spacing before the footline containing 1

..\glue(\lineskip) 0.0
..\hbox(6.44444+0.0)x430.00462, glue set 212.5023fil
...\glue 0.0 plus 1.0fil
...\OT1/cmr/m/n/10 1

Note that it is using \lineskip glue which means that \baselineskip (which would have been locally set to \footskip) is not used here.

David Carlisle
  • 757,742
  • Thanks. However, I still wonder: where does the page number "live"? If you add the option showframe to the geometry \usepackage command, you'll see that the page number appears below the bottom of the textarea, even though the footskip option is set to 0pt, which would imply that the footer's baseline should coincide with the bottom of the textarea. If you additionally change the footskip to -10pt, this "contradiction" is even more pronounced, since the page number still appears below the text area, even though the footer's baseline is strictly above the bottom of the text area. – Evan Aad Jun 11 '17 at 15:39
  • footskip is just a distance to the footer saying how much to space it off from the text body. – Andrew Swann Jun 11 '17 at 15:47
  • @AndrewSwann: Hence footskip=0pt means that the footer's baseline coincides with the bottom of the textarea, right? Then how come does the page number appear below the textarea? – Evan Aad Jun 11 '17 at 15:49
  • @EvanAad it is just the same as if you set baselineskip to 0pt, tex does not put every line of the paragraph at the same point over-printing, it just gives up and stacks them vertically with no equalized baseline spacing – David Carlisle Jun 11 '17 at 16:01
  • Yes, that is what source2e says. But trying this in an article it shows that it is to the top of the footer box (e.g. use geometry with its showframe option) – Andrew Swann Jun 11 '17 at 16:04
  • \footskip is used just in one place, to set \baselineskip locally when adding the footer: \baselineskip \footskip – David Carlisle Jun 11 '17 at 16:09
  • @AndrewSwann: I edited my question to add a showframe. This only makes the problem more perplexing. – Evan Aad Jun 11 '17 at 16:14
  • David, I've edited my question to add the content of my first comment to your answer. – Evan Aad Jun 11 '17 at 16:16
  • @EvanAad the output seems as expected to me, but I'll add some tracing output to my answer. – David Carlisle Jun 11 '17 at 16:17
  • @EvanAad answer updated – David Carlisle Jun 11 '17 at 16:21
  • Could you please dumb your answer down a little? It's a little too advanced for me to understand. – Evan Aad Jun 11 '17 at 16:27
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    @EvanAad see for example this answer on how \lineskip is used if \baselineskip can not be achieved https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/23944/extreme-vertical-spacing-between-lines/23955#23955 – David Carlisle Jun 11 '17 at 16:31