How to find macros to adjust footer (lefoot, cefoot etc.) with scrlayer-scrpage

Question

I'm still working on a Latex-template for my institution. So far everything runs fine and the former questions i asked here helped me a lot.

Now, i want to adjust the different parts of the journals footer to meet the expected layout. I have a working solution using \parbox inside my \lofoot, \cofoot etc. commands that makes the footer contents show up as wanted. The authors should appear on the left side with a linebreak if there are several, the title should appear always right of the author section, also flushedright to the right margin of the textbody, also with a linebreak if needed (see MWE below). But i figured the fitting widths out only using trial and error. That's not how it should be (I'm kind of a perfectionist ;) )

Thus, i wanted to find out which macros inside the scrlayer-scrpage package define those commands and to adjust/renew them that they fit my needs. But, so far, i wasn't able to receive these informations.

When i run latexdef -p scrlayer-scrpage lefoot inside the terminal or use \meaning\lefoot inside my document, for example, i get the phrase macro:->\sls@renewelement {even}{left}{foot}. So far, so good, but i couldn't figure out how to find the definition of the element foot (Running latexdef on foot produced only that it's undefined since foot is no command, running it on sls@renewelement didn't help either). I also searched inside the .sty file directly without a result. If i run {\tracingall\lefoot} inside the document the compilation process never ends and i can't find any informations in the log.

Therefore, my question is not only about the mentioned adjustment of the footer, but also a general one on working deeper in Latex/Tex backend: How to get these kind of informations if I need to do it again – and this will be the case for sure since I'm only getting started with the template.

Here is my MWE (I intentionnaly use the article class and no KOMA-class). I added my workaround solution only to the odd pages, so everyone can see the layout differences:

\documentclass[a4paper,12pt,
twoside,%
]{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}


\usepackage{blindtext}

\usepackage{geometry}
\geometry{%
    inner=20mm,
    outer=60mm,
    top=15mm,
    bottom=20mm,
    marginparwidth=45mm,
    showframe % to show the margins
}

\usepackage[footwidth=textwithmarginpar,footsepline=0.4pt:text,ilines]{scrlayer-scrpage}
\clearpairofpagestyles

\ModifyLayer[addvoffset=2.5ex]{scrheadings.foot.odd}
\ModifyLayer[addvoffset=2.5ex]{scrheadings.foot.even}
\ModifyLayer[addvoffset=2.5ex]{scrheadings.foot.oneside}
\ModifyLayer[addvoffset=2.5ex]{plain.scrheadings.foot.odd}
\ModifyLayer[addvoffset=2.5ex]{plain.scrheadings.foot.even}
\ModifyLayer[addvoffset=2.5ex]{plain.scrheadings.foot.oneside}

\setkomafont{pagefoot}{\sffamily\tiny\normalshape}

\ohead*{\pagemark}

\lefoot*{Journal 2000, § 1--4}
\cefoot*{A List of different authors who have written the current article}
\refoot*{\bfseries The title of the current article which was written by the different authors mentioned on the left}

\lofoot*{\parbox[t]{.35\textwidth}{A List of different authors who have written the current article}}
\cofoot*{\hspace*{.13\textwidth}\parbox[t]{.5\textwidth}{\raggedleft\bfseries The title of the current article which was written by the different authors mentioned on the left}}
\rofoot*{Journal 2000, § 1--4}


\begin{document}

\section{Section Heading}
 \blindtext[5]

\end{document}

I'm sure the solution can be interpreted from reading The TeXbook or TeX by Topic or something similar, but it would save me an enormous amount of time if someone has a faster answer. The KOMA-script documentation wasn't as helpful so far.

Thanks in advance for your helpful replies!

EDIT

The links provided in the comments are very helpful and I found a lot which I nedd and want to read to understand Latex even better.

But the particular question remains unsolved and i couldn't find a solution. I still adjust the footer layout by using parbox and hspace* commands inside the lefoot... commands provided by the scrlayer-scrpage package. Inside the package the \lefoot command i.e. is defined as macro:->\sls@renewelement {even}{left}{foot}.

Has anyone the concrete answer where to find the definition of these three elements, so i can redefine them to fitting my needs? Or is it generally a bad idea to change something as deep inside the package-tree/backend?

Answer 1

You could use eg.

\lefoot*{Journal 2000, § 1--4}
\refoot*{%
  \parbox[t][\ht\strutbox]{.5\textwidth}{\bfseries The title of the current article which was written by the different authors mentioned on the left}%
  \hspace*{.15\textwidth}%
  \parbox[t][\ht\strutbox]{.35\textwidth}{\raggedleft A List of different authors who have written the current article}%
}

\lofoot*{%
  \parbox[t][\ht\strutbox]{.35\textwidth}{A List of different authors who have written the current article}%
  \hspace*{.15\textwidth}%
  \parbox[t][\ht\strutbox]{.5\textwidth}{\raggedleft\bfseries The title of the current article which was written by the different authors mentioned on the left}%
}
\rofoot*{Journal 2000, § 1--4}

or

\refoot*{%
  \parbox{\textwidth}{%
    \parbox[t][\ht\strutbox]{.5\linewidth}{\bfseries The title of the current article which was written by the different authors mentioned on the left}%
    \hfill%
    \parbox[t][\ht\strutbox]{.35\linewidth}{\raggedleft A List of different authors who have written the current article}%
}}

\lofoot*{%
  \parbox{\textwidth}{%
    \parbox[t][\ht\strutbox]{.35\linewidth}{A List of different authors who have written the current article}%
    \hfill%
    \parbox[t][\ht\strutbox]{.5\linewidth}{\raggedleft\bfseries The title of the current article which was written by the different authors mentioned on the left}%
}}

Example:

\documentclass[a4paper,12pt,
twoside,%
]{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{blindtext}
\usepackage{geometry}
\geometry{%
  inner=20mm,
  outer=60mm,
  top=15mm,
  bottom=20mm,
  marginparwidth=45mm,
  showframe % to show the margins
}

\usepackage[footwidth=textwithmarginpar,footsepline=0.4pt:text,ilines]{scrlayer-scrpage}
\clearpairofpagestyles

\ModifyLayer[addvoffset=2.5ex]{scrheadings.foot.odd}
\ModifyLayer[addvoffset=2.5ex]{scrheadings.foot.even}
\ModifyLayer[addvoffset=2.5ex]{scrheadings.foot.oneside}
\ModifyLayer[addvoffset=2.5ex]{plain.scrheadings.foot.odd}
\ModifyLayer[addvoffset=2.5ex]{plain.scrheadings.foot.even}
\ModifyLayer[addvoffset=2.5ex]{plain.scrheadings.foot.oneside}

\setkomafont{pagefoot}{\sffamily\tiny\normalshape}

\ohead*{\pagemark}
\ofoot*{Journal 2000, § 1--4}

\refoot*{%
  \parbox[t][\ht\strutbox]{.5\textwidth}{\bfseries The title of the current article which was written by the different authors mentioned on the left}%
  \hspace*{.15\textwidth}%
  \parbox[t][\ht\strutbox]{.35\textwidth}{\raggedleft A List of different authors who have written the current article}%
}

\lofoot*{%
  \parbox[t][\ht\strutbox]{.35\textwidth}{A List of different authors who have written the current article}%
  \hspace*{.15\textwidth}%
  \parbox[t][\ht\strutbox]{.5\textwidth}{\raggedleft\bfseries The title of the current article which was written by the different authors mentioned on the left}%
}

\begin{document}
\section{Section Heading}
\blindtext[5]
\end{document}

You could also use the default footwidth=text and declare additional layers for the marginpar in footer. Then it would be possible to use \ifoot* and \ofoot* for the entries aligned with the text.

Answer 2

for the sake of completion I post here my current solution. I used @esdd's answer for the last week. But ultimately, I needed to settle with another solution, because the required document layout changes geometry inside the document and that killed the adjustment of the footer.

I tried many different ways, but finally decided not to use the standard options provided by the scrlayer-scrpage package like \lofoot{} etc. Instead i declared some new layers which use the relation of \linewidth and \textwidth of the standard geometry. Thus, the footer doesn't changes it layout after \newgeometry is called.

Now I use the following code, and it works quite fine; no matter how the geometry is adjusted:

\documentclass[%
twoside,a4paper]{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{noto}

\usepackage{geometry}
\geometry{%
    inner=20mm,
    outer=60mm,
    top=15mm,
    bottom=20mm,
    marginparwidth=40.5mm,
    marginparsep=4.5mm,
    showframe % to show the margins
}

\usepackage{multicol}

\usepackage[]{scrlayer-scrpage}
\clearpairofpagestyles
\usepackage{xcolor}
%% Footer content %%
\DeclareNewLayer[
background,
twoside,
oddpage,
foot,
width=\textwidth+\marginparsep+\marginparwidth,
voffset=1in+\topmargin+\headsep+\textheight+\footskip+.6\footnotesep,
contents={\sffamily\tiny\normalshape%
    \parbox[b]{.743\linewidth}{%
    \parbox[b]{.35\linewidth}{\color{red}A\rule{\linewidth}{2pt}}%
    \hfill%
    \parbox[b]{.5\linewidth}{\color{green}\rule{\linewidth}{2pt}\raggedleft}%
    }%
    \hfill%
    \parbox[b]{.2\linewidth}{\color{blue}Journaltitle 1--12\raggedleft}%
    }
]{oddfootercontent}
\DeclareNewLayer[
clone=oddfootercontent,
evenpage,
hoffset=\evensidemargin+1in-\marginparsep-\marginparwidth,
contents={\sffamily\tiny\normalshape%
    \parbox[b]{\linewidth}{%
    \parbox[b]{.2\linewidth}{\color{blue}Journaltitle 1--12}%
    \hfill
    \parbox[b]{.743\linewidth}{%
        \parbox[b]{.35\linewidth}{\color{red}\rule{\linewidth}{2pt}}%
        \hfill%
        \parbox[b]{.5\linewidth}{\color{green}\rule{\linewidth}{2pt}\raggedleft}%
    }
    }
    }
]{evenfootercontent}
%% pagenumber at bottom of outsidemargin %%
\DeclareNewLayer[
background,
oneside,
outermargin,
height=\textheight,
voffset=1in+\voffset+\topmargin+\headheight+\headsep+.8\footnotesep,
contents={%
    \parbox[b][\layerheight][b]{\layerwidth}
    {\raggedleft\hfill\pagemark\hspace*{15mm}}%
}
]{outermargin.pagenumber.oneside}
\DeclareNewLayer[
clone=outermargin.pagenumber.oneside,
twoside,
oddpage
]{outermargin.pagenumber.odd}
\DeclareNewLayer[
clone=outermargin.pagenumber.odd,
evenpage,
contents={%
    \parbox[b][\layerheight][b]{\layerwidth}
    {\hspace*{15mm}\pagemark\hfill}%
}
]{outermargin.pagenumber.even}
\AddLayersToPageStyle{scrheadings}{%
    oddfootercontent,%
    evenfootercontent,%
    outermargin.pagenumber.oneside,%
    outermargin.pagenumber.odd,%
    outermargin.pagenumber.even%
}
\AddLayersToPageStyle{plain.scrheadings}{%
    oddfootercontent,%
    evenfootercontent,%
    outermargin.pagenumber.oneside,%
    outermargin.pagenumber.odd,%
    outermargin.pagenumber.even%
}
\setkomafont{pagenumber}{\sffamily\bfseries}
\usepackage[%
hang,%
bottom%
]{footmisc}
\setlength{\footnotemargin}{0.5cm}
\setlength{\skip\footins}{0,5cm}
\makeatletter
\renewcommand\footnoterule{\kern-3\p@
        \hrule \@width \textwidth \kern 2.6\p@}
\makeatother

\usepackage{blindtext}

\begin{document}
    \section{Autoren}
    \blindtext\footnote{text}
    
    \blindtext[6]\footnote{text}
    
    \blindtext[2]

    \newgeometry{
    inner=20mm,
    outer=37.5mm,
    top=15mm,
    bottom=20mm,
    marginparwidth=18mm,
    marginparsep=4.5mm
    }
    \begin{multicols}{2}
        \section{newgeometry}       
        \blindtext[3]\footnote{text}
        
        \blindtext[6]
    \end{multicols}
\end{document}

Nevertheless, @esdd's answer provided me the first solution, as well as the concept my own solution relies on. Therefore, it still is the answer which solved the question.

Thanks