E.2.2 Standard Heading Formats

Texinfo provides two standard heading formats, one for manuals printed on one side of each sheet of paper, and the other for manuals printed on both sides of the paper.

By default, nothing is specified for the footing of a Texinfo file, so the footing remains blank.

The standard format for single-sided printing consists of a header line in which the left-hand part contains the name of the chapter, the central part is blank, and the right-hand part contains the page number.

A single-sided page looks like this:

  _______________________
 |                       |
 | chapter   page number |
 |                       |
 | Start of text ...     |
 | ...                   |
 |                       |

The standard format for two-sided printing depends on whether the page number is even or odd. By convention, even-numbered pages are on the left- and odd-numbered pages are on the right. (TeX will adjust the widths of the left- and right-hand margins. Usually, widths are correct, but during double-sided printing, it is wise to check that pages will bind properly—sometimes a printer will produce output in which the even-numbered pages have a larger right-hand margin than the odd-numbered pages.)

In the standard double-sided format, the left part of the left-hand (even-numbered) page contains the page number, the central part is blank, and the right part contains the title (specified by the @settitle command). The left part of the right-hand (odd-numbered) page contains the name of the chapter, the central part is blank, and the right part contains the page number.

Two pages, side by side as in an open book, look like this:

  _______________________     _______________________
 |                       |   |                       |
 | page number     title |   | chapter   page number |
 |                       |   |                       |
 | Start of text ...     |   | More  text ...        |
 | ...                   |   | ...                   |
 |                       |   |                       |

The chapter name is preceded by the word “Chapter”, the chapter number and a colon. This makes it easier to keep track of where you are in the manual.