Visualizing the layout

When designing a document, obtaining precise information about the dimensions and positioning of layout elements, such as the text body, header, footer, and the space allocated for the margin notes, is often helpful. LaTeX can print helplines for you to examine and finetune the layout.

How to do it...

We will use the showframe package. Take the following steps:

1. Open your document or any sample for testing. Here, we will use the very first document from Chapter 1, Exploring Various Document Classes.
2. Add the following line at the end of your preamble:

   \usepackage{showframe}

3. Compile the document. You can see frames around the text body, the margin note area, the header, and the footer as you can see here:

Figure 2.6 – A page layout overview

Examining the layout can inspire adjustments, such as modifying the margins or other page dimensions. When you no longer need these helplines, you can deactivate the...