latexpdflatex
In my LaTeX document I've got a table of contents that is automatically generated by collecting everything that is of the form \chapter.
However, I've got an acknowledgements chapter before the table of contents and I don't want it to be automatically labelled "Chapter 1" or captured in the table of contents. Should I be avoiding \chapter altogether and use \section instead? I want to keep the font/formatting that other chapters have though.
It seems to me that what you really want, is to customize the look of the captions. This is most easily done using the caption package. For instructions how to use this package, see the manual (PDF). You would probably need to create your own custom caption format, as described in chapter 4 in the manual.
Edit: Tested with MikTex:
\documentclass{report}
\usepackage{color}
\usepackage{xcolor}
\usepackage{listings}
\usepackage{caption}
\DeclareCaptionFont{white}{\color{white}}
\DeclareCaptionFormat{listing}{\colorbox{gray}{\parbox{\textwidth}{#1#2#3}}}
\captionsetup[lstlisting]{format=listing,labelfont=white,textfont=white}
% This concludes the preamble
\begin{document}
\begin{lstlisting}[label=some-code,caption=Some Code]
public void here() {
goes().the().code()
}
\end{lstlisting}
\end{document}
Result:
The * forms of the \chapter etc. commands do not call the mark commands. So if you want your preface to set the header info but not be numbered nor be put in the table of contents, you must issue the \markboth command yourself, e.g.
\chapter*{abc123\markboth{abc123}{}}
Best Answer
The usual way to handle that kind of thing is with the
\frontmattercommand. Put it after the\begin{document}, and then put\mainmatterright before the\chapteryou want to correspond to chapter 1. This may only work in thebookclass. If you're using\chapterin areport, then\chapter*should also create a chapter that has no number and won't show up in the table of contents.