[texhax] \@startsection

[Michael Barr]

I am involved in a project to reprint a book that was published 40 years 
ago.  The authors had numbered sections, as well as theorems, etc. 
numbered in the same sequence as the sections (so Section 7.1, then 
Theorem 7.2, then Section 7.3, etc.).  I wanted to make odd page headers 
with the section number of the last actual named section.  I finally did 
this by defining \@varstartsection that did what \@startsection did but 
without defining \sectionmark.  The other problem is getting the page 
headers correct for the unnumbered chapters References and Index, which I 
finally sorted out by hand.  There the problem is that one parameter (*), 
does three logically separate things: it doesn't number the section, it 
doesn't add it to the contents, and it doesn't set the \sectionmark.  If 
you want to do only one or two of things you are in trouble.  Is there a 
better set of sectioning commands?  I could not find anything on CTAN that 
looked like it did it.

Michael Barr