Using \MakeUppercase in \@startsection

Question

I was toying a bit with the \@startsection command to change the layout of chapter / section headings. More specifically, I wanted my headers to be converted to uppercase.

I was following an example from the LaTeX compendium:

\documentclass{scrbook}
\makeatletter
\renewcommand\chapter{\@startsection
{chapter}{0}{0mm}
{-\baselineskip}
{0.5\baselineskip}
{\MakeUppercase}}
\makeatother
\usepackage{lipsum}
\begin{document}
\chapter{SomeChapter}
\lipsum[1]
\end{document}

This tossed an error message at me from the line \chapter{SomeChapter}:

Argument of \@gobble has an extra }.

After quite some trial & error, I found that using \uppercase instead of \MakeUppercase worked fine - but not for Umlauts.

What did I do wrong? Shouldn't \MakeUppercase work as well (and handle Umlauts correctly)?

Answer 1

Your redefinition works for the book class. With scrbook it doesn't, however I would make it differently any way.

• There are KOMA-Script features which I would continue supporting, such as \sectfont, \raggedsection and \size@chapter. They are originally used for \chapter, similar with \section, not using them could break the expected behavior of KOMA-Script commands.

• You could attach \MakeUppercase to \size@chapter. You could do it in different ways. Note, you have to use \makeatletter ... \makeatother around such a definition involving a command with @ in a name.

  • The quick and easy way, if you know your heading size, for example \Huge:

    \renewcommand*{\size@chapter}{\Huge\MakeUppercase}
    

  • The safe way, where you don't need to know your heading size, you just store and use it:

    \let\origsize\size@chapter
    \renewcommand*{\size@chapter}{\origsize\MakeUppercase}
    

  • A way using \expandafter to change the order of macro expansion, so you don't need an additional macro to backup the original size command, in just one line:

    \expandafter\def\expandafter\size@chapter\expandafter{\size@chapter\MakeUppercase}
    

  • The shortest way, using \g@addto@macro to attach code to another command:

    \g@addto@macro\size@chapter\MakeUppercase
    

• I would not use headings completely in upper case. Instead, I recommend considering using small caps instead, which is easily done by

  \addtokomafont{chapter}{\scshape}
  

Not all fonts offer small caps in with bold sans serif font, which is common for KOMA-Script classes. kpfonts does, so \usepackage{kpfonts} would show this command works, or

\setkomafont{chapter}{\normalfont\huge\rmfamily\scshape}

Answer 2

You can also consider using a expandable version of \MakeUppercase. That's very safe in any arguments. And I hope this will be available in expl3 some day. See my previous question: Are there purely expandable variants of \MakeUppercase?

For example, using Joseph Wright's solution:

\documentclass{scrbook}

\usepackage{expl3}
\ExplSyntaxOn
\cs_new:Npn \tl_to_upper_case:n #1 {
  \exp_args:Nf \tl_to_upper_case_aux:n {#1}
}
\cs_new:Npn \tl_to_upper_case_aux:n #1 {
  \tl_to_upper_case_aux:w #1 ~ \q_no_value \q_stop
}
\cs_new:Npn \tl_to_upper_case_aux:w #1 ~ #2 \q_stop {
  \quark_if_no_value:nTF {#2}
    { 
      \tl_map_function:nN {#1} \tl_to_upper_case_aux:N 
      \tl_to_case_end:n { }
    }
    { \tl_to_upper_case_aux:w #1 { ~ } #2 \q_stop }
}
\cs_new:Npn \tl_to_upper_case_aux:N #1 {
  \prg_case_str:nnn {#1}
    {
      { a } { \tl_to_case_aux:nw { A } }
      { b } { \tl_to_case_aux:nw { B } }
      { c } { \tl_to_case_aux:nw { C } }
      { d } { \tl_to_case_aux:nw { D } }
      { e } { \tl_to_case_aux:nw { E } }
      { f } { \tl_to_case_aux:nw { F } }
      { g } { \tl_to_case_aux:nw { G } }
      { h } { \tl_to_case_aux:nw { H } }
      { i } { \tl_to_case_aux:nw { I } }
      { j } { \tl_to_case_aux:nw { J } }
      { k } { \tl_to_case_aux:nw { K } }
      { l } { \tl_to_case_aux:nw { L } }
      { m } { \tl_to_case_aux:nw { M } }
      { n } { \tl_to_case_aux:nw { N } }
      { o } { \tl_to_case_aux:nw { O } }
      { p } { \tl_to_case_aux:nw { P } }
      { q } { \tl_to_case_aux:nw { Q } }
      { r } { \tl_to_case_aux:nw { R } }
      { s } { \tl_to_case_aux:nw { S } }
      { t } { \tl_to_case_aux:nw { T } }
      { u } { \tl_to_case_aux:nw { U } }
      { v } { \tl_to_case_aux:nw { V } }
      { w } { \tl_to_case_aux:nw { W } }
      { x } { \tl_to_case_aux:nw { X } }
      { y } { \tl_to_case_aux:nw { Y } }
      { z } { \tl_to_case_aux:nw { Z } }
    }
    { \tl_to_case_aux:nw {#1 } }
}
\cs_new:Npn \tl_to_case_aux:nw #1#2 \tl_to_case_end:n #3 {
    #2 \tl_to_case_end:n { #3 #1 }
}
\char_make_math_shift:N \Q
\cs_new:Npn \tl_to_case_end:n #1 {
  \tl_to_case_strip_i:w #1 Q ~ Q
}
\cs_new:Npn \tl_to_case_strip_i:w #1 ~ Q {
  \tl_to_case_strip_ii:w #1 Q
}
\cs_new:Npn \tl_to_case_strip_ii:w #1 Q #2 {#1}
\char_make_letter:N \Q
\cs_set_eq:NN \MakeExpandableUppercase \tl_to_upper_case:n
\ExplSyntaxOff


\makeatletter
\renewcommand\chapter{\@startsection
{chapter}{0}{0mm}
{-\baselineskip}
{0.5\baselineskip}
{\MakeExpandableUppercase}}
\makeatother
\usepackage{lipsum}
\begin{document}
\chapter{SomeChapter}
\lipsum[1]
\end{document}

Answer 3

To format the headings with a KOMA-class you can use the commands setkomafont or addkomafont.

For more details have a look at the excelent documentation.

Here a solution which was created by Heiko Oberdieck:

\documentclass{scrartcl}
\usepackage{makerobust}
\makeatletter
\MakeRobustCommand\@hangfrom
\newcommand*{\SectionMakeUppercase}{%
\MakeRobustCommand\@svsec
\MakeUppercase
}
\makeatother
\setkomafont{section}{\SectionMakeUppercase}
\begin{document}
\section{Hello World}
\end{document}