How to get the current heading numbering format?

Questions
1

I know that you can get the current page numbering format using #context here().page-numbering().

However, I would like the same thing, but for headings, i.e., the last format that was passed to #set heading(numbering: ...).

Is there a simple solution that does not involve storing this format in a state()?

2

Does #context heading.numbering work?

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3

Yes it works, and apparently #context page.numbering also works! Thank you!

But then what is the point of the #context here().page-numbering() function?

4

I’ll be honest, I have no idea. Maybe it’s something that has been kept as a feature for sake of backwards compatibility, but that’s just a guess. Maybe someone else more knowledgable can chime in.

5

page-numbering() is a method on the location type, maybe it’s redundant for the here() location but as the doc says:

This is useful if you are building custom indices or outlines.

If you’re making an index or outline, you need to use the page numbering of the location of the target, while context page.numbering would give the numbering of the pages where the index is shown.

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6

It makes sense, thank you!

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7

But wouldn’t it also be interesting to access the heading numbering from a location? If you want to recreate an outline() for instance, you want to access the numbering of the heading in the outline, not the current numbering.

What I want to ask is, are there some use cases where we need a location.heading-numbering() function?

8

When you get the headings to build e.g. a special outline, for example with context query(heading), you get a list of heading elements and you can simply find their numbering with elem.numbering:

= A

#set heading(numbering: "1.")

= B

#context query(heading).map(elem => elem.numbering)

Here the last line will return (none, "1.").

Now you may ask: what if the index must show the heading number of the section where each word is found? You can get the heading counter with counter(heading).at(location) but indeed I’m not sure how you would get the correct numbering. Maybe with query(heading).before(location).last()…

9

And you can’t do the same thing with pages because page is not locatable, right?

10

Yes, and also because you’re not working with pages anyway, but with things that have a location on a page.

I guess Typst could have done this a bit differently, allowing you to get a page element for each word and then get the numbering from that page, but that’s not how it works (pages are not elements that you can inspect).