HowTo_MoveFootSepLine

How to move the separator between text area and footer a little bit upwards

The separator line that can be activated with the KOMA-Script classes with option footsepline has a fixed position. Although you can change the vertical position of the page number in the foot itself by redefining \pagemark and inserting an invisible strut, for example:

\renewcommand*{\pagemark}{\rule{0pt}{1.5\normalbaselineskip}\usekomafont{pagenumber}{\thepage}

or by using \raisebox, for example

\renewcommand*{\pagemark}{\raisebox{-.5\normalbaselineskip}{\usekomafont{pagenumber}{\thepage}}

slightly downwards and thus away from the line. Such indirect solutions—the output of the page number instead of the separator line itself is manipulated here—are, however, often not considered very nice. Furthermore, the \raisebox method does not move the separator line (upwards) at all, but actually the page number (downwards).

If you want to change the position of the separator line itself instead, you have to use a page style package like scrlayer-scrpage. With scrlayer-scrpage, the line is a dedicated layer <name>.foot.above.line, where <name> is the name of the page style. The vertical position of the layer is its attribute voffset. With \ModifyLayer you can change the attributes of a layer. Not only can you specify the absolute vertical position with voffset, you can also add a value to the current vertical position with addvoffset. Since voffset is measured from the top edge of the paper, negative values for addvoffset move the line upwards. So, for example, to get the line 2 pt upwards is sufficient:

\documentclass[footsepline]{scrbook}
\usepackage[plainfootsepline]{scrlayer-scrpage}
\usepackage{blind text}
\ModifyLayer[addvoffset=-2pt]{scrheadings.foot.above.line}
\ModifyLayer[addvoffset=-2pt]{plain.scrheadings.foot.above.line}
\begin{document}
\blinddocument
\end{document}

As can be seen in the example, the vertical position has been changed for two layers. This is because chapter start pages are set in plain page style plain.scrheadings. To ensure that the line is not only moved on the remaining pages that use the page style scrheadings, the layers had to be changed for both page styles.

By the way, the names of the layers of all separator lines are:

<name>.head.above.line — the layer of the separator line above the page head of page style <name>,
<name>.head.below.line — the layer of the separator line below the page head of page style <name>,
<name>.foot.above.line — the layer of the separator line above the page foot of page style <name>,
<name>.foot.below.line — the layer of the separator line below the page foot of page style <name>.