Page Layout ⇒ Quotes or introductory paragraphs to open each Chapter

[barakkhazad]

Greets to everybody,
I've got a consult to do:

I am writing a long document (a thesis) and I'd like to open each chapter, instead of the standard way in which Latex does it for "book" documents, with a page in which there was just the number and title of the chapter, and below, a famous quote, related and as an introduction to the content of such chapter, and nothing else. In the next page, the chapter would start in a normal way, with the text in its usual layout, etc.
I guess this can be useful both for including quotations in the beginning of chapters as well as for ultra-brief summaries of the contents, for instance...
It would also help me if instead of in each \chapter, i could get it done in each \part.

I guess there must be a more or less complex way of doing this using minipages and manual allignment, etc., but that implies including all corresponding code to the layout of that special page in the opening of each chapter. Not being an expert, that'd be difficult for me and it doesn't seem a clean solution.

If anybody knows a specific package to do this, to which you can pass as argument the quote or paragraph between brackets or {}, or some other clean and clear way of obtaining a page like that for the opening of chapters, you'd solve me a huge problem!!


Thanks in beforehand for the help and any answer! Greetings.

[gmedina]

Hi,

the epigraph package helps you to do the job. Refer to the package documentation for further information.

[barakkhazad]

thanks, gmedina, for your answer!
i've been reading the documentation for the package and it looks useful indeed to include epigraphs in the heading of chapter pages, as well as in standalone part pages.
but, any idea about how to produce a single page in which only the chapter title and the epigraph would be present, and turning over, we'd find the chapter running normally? that'd be what i was ultimately looking for...
thanks again.

[gmedina]

...
but, any idea about how to produce a single page in which only the chapter title and the epigraph would be present, and turning over, we'd find the chapter running normally?...

Re-reading your first post, you want the number of the chapter followed by the chapter's title and an epigaph to be the only elements of a single page. This can be accomplished by redefining the \chapter (to suppress the numbering for the page) and \makechapterhead (to change the format of the chapter's head) commands as implemented in book.cls. The following code shows how to proceed:

Code: Select all

\documentclass{book}
\usepackage{epigraph}

\makeatletter
\renewcommand\chapter{\if@openright\cleardoublepage\else\clearpage\fi
                    \thispagestyle{empty}%
                    \global\@topnum\z@
                    \@afterindentfalse
                    \secdef\@chapter\@schapter}
\def\@makechapterhead#1{%
  \vspace*{50\p@}%
  {\parindent \z@ \raggedright \normalfont
    \ifnum \c@secnumdepth >\m@ne
      \if@mainmatter
        \huge\bfseries\thechapter\enspace
      \fi
    \fi
    \Huge \bfseries #1\par\nobreak
    \vskip 40\p@
  }}
\makeatother

\begin{document}

\chapter{Test chapter}
\epigraph{Text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text}{Some Author}
\clearpage

And now comes the actual chapter's text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text
\end{document}

[barakkhazad]

Yes, that's what i was looking for, gmedina
I didn't know the \makechapterhead command. Thanks a lot!!!

Actually, for fiddling, I guess it's possible to have again the normal heading for the chapter in the second page by tuning that \makechapterhead options? I mean, having first the single page with the title and number of the chapter plus the epigraph, and then continue as normal with the whole chapter as it would be typesetted if we hadn't included the first extra page. Or isn't it possible because the title of the chapter has already appeared and it can only be passed to the output once??

[gmedina]

...Actually, for fiddling, I guess it's possible to have again the normal heading for the chapter in the second page by tuning that \makechapterhead options? I mean, having first the single page with the title and number of the chapter plus the epigraph, and then continue as normal with the whole chapter as it would be typesetted if we hadn't included the first extra page. Or isn't it possible because the title of the chapter has already appeared and it can only be passed to the output once??...

This would require a different approach. Now I don't have time, but as soon as I can, I will think about this and propose you a possible solution.

[barakkhazad]

ok, thanks a lot, gmedina