I'm looking for some beautiful chapter headings for a literature book. I know about fncychap and titlesec, and I've read all the chapter headings related questions I could find on this website, but I've found them all too 'modern', whereas I am looking for something more elegant and classic. As an example of what I mean I'm attaching two images.
I know I'm a bit late, but anyway :P
I used the capabilities of titlesec along with the Victorian Ornaments from psvectorian and a few other simple commands.
The psvectorian package is intended for using in XeLaTeX. To use it with pdfLaTeX you need the auto-pst-pdf package and need to compile the document with -shell-escape enabled (pdflatex -shell-escape document.tex). If you use arara to build your document you can just add a directive % arara: pdflatex: { shell: yes } to make things easier.
Here they are:
A chapter name with one line above it and a double line below, and two ornaments on the sides.
\documentclass{book}
\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage{blindtext}
\usepackage[sc,compact,explicit]{titlesec} % Titlesec for configuring the header
\usepackage{tikz} % Tikz for the double underline (from: https://superuser.com/questions/1136672/double-underline-one-of-them-dashed)
\usepackage{auto-pst-pdf} % Vectorian Ornaments XeTeX auxiliary (from: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/253477/how-to-use-psvectorian-with-pdflatex)
\usepackage{psvectorian} % Vectorian Ornaments
\let\clipbox\relax % PSTricks (used by PSVectorian) already defines a \clipbox, so we need this workaround
\usepackage{adjustbox} % Adjustbox to rescale the ornaments (scalebox breaks titlesec for some reason...)
\makeatletter % Defining a overline (from: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/24132/overline-outside-of-math-mode)
\newcommand*{\textoverline}[1]{$\overline{\hbox{#1}}\m@th$}
\makeatother
\newcommand{\specdash}[1]{% % Defining a double underline (from: https://superuser.com/questions/1136672/double-underline-one-of-them-dashed)
\tikz[baseline=(todotted.base)]{
\node[inner sep=1pt,outer sep=0pt] (todotted) {#1};
\draw ([yshift=-5pt]todotted.south west) -- ([yshift=-5pt]todotted.south east); % 5 pt below
\draw ([yshift=-7pt]todotted.south west) -- ([yshift=-7pt]todotted.south east); % and 7 pt below
}%
}%
\newcommand{\fancydraw}{% Defining a command to shorten things
\begin{adjustbox}{max height=0.5\baselineskip}% Rescaling to have height of 0.5\baselineskip
\rotatebox{90}{% And rotating 90 degrees
\psvectorian{26}% Ornament n° 26 (http://melusine.eu.org/syracuse/pstricks/vectorian/psvectorian.pdf)
}%
\end{adjustbox}%
}
\titleformat% Formatting the header
{\chapter} % command
[block] % shape - Only managed to get it working with block
{\normalfont\bfseries\sc\huge} % format - Change here as needed
{} % label - Not using labels
{0pt} % sep
{\centering % Centering the title
\textoverline{% Overlined
\specdash{% And double-underlined
\fancydraw% Inserting the ornament
\hspace{1em}% Adding a space to the text
#1% The actual chapter name
\hspace{1em}% Another space after the title
\rotatebox[origin=c]{180}{\fancydraw}% and a 180 degree rotated version of the ornament
}}}%
\begin{document}
\chapter{The beginning}
\blindtext
\end{document}
A "Chapter N°", an ornament with one rule on each side, and the chapter name below.
\documentclass{book}
\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage{blindtext}
\usepackage[sc,compact,explicit]{titlesec} % Titlesec for configuring the header
\usepackage{auto-pst-pdf} % Vectorian Ornaments XeTeX auxiliary (from: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/253477/how-to-use-psvectorian-with-pdflatex)
\usepackage{psvectorian} % Vectorian Ornaments
\let\clipbox\relax % PSTricks (used by PSVectorian) already defines a \clipbox, so we need this workaround
\usepackage{adjustbox} % Adjustbox to rescale the ornaments (scalebox breaks titlesec for some reason...)
\newcommand{\otherfancydraw}{% Defining a command to shorten things
\begin{adjustbox}{max height=0.5\baselineskip}% Rescaling to have height of 0.5\baselineskip
\raisebox{-0.25\baselineskip}{
\rotatebox[origin=c]{45}{% And rotating 90 degrees
\psvectorian{7}% Ornament n° 26 (http://melusine.eu.org/syracuse/pstricks/vectorian/psvectorian.pdf)
}}%
\end{adjustbox}%
}
% A command to create a rule centered vertically on the text (from: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/15119/draw-horizontal-line-left-and-right-of-some-text-a-single-line/15122#15122)
\newcommand*\ruleline[1]{\par\noindent\raisebox{.8ex}{\makebox[\linewidth]{\hrulefill\hspace{1ex}\raisebox{-.8ex}{#1}\hspace{1ex}\hrulefill}}}
\titleformat% Formatting the header
{\chapter} % command
[block] % shape - Only managed to get it working with block
{\normalfont\bfseries\sc\huge} % format - Change here as needed
{\centering Chapter \thechapter\\} % The Chapter N° label
{0pt} % sep
{\centering \ruleline{\otherfancydraw}\\ % The horizontal rule
\centering #1} % And the actual title
\begin{document}
\chapter{The beginning}
\blindtext
\end{document}
titlesecand a suitable font (e.g. Garamond).titlesec(for this kind of thing I would probably use thememoirclass instead, though). For the ornaments, you can use thepgfornamentpackage.noveldocument class, which is specifically intended for literature rather than math. It uses LuaLaTeX, so you can use an Open Type font without worrying about encoding. The capability to do fancy chapter headings is built in.