[pdftex] Asymmetric margins

[John Culleton]

On Friday 02 January 2004 09:34 am, Sebastian Rahtz wrote:
> John Culleton wrote:
> >In plain pdftex, how does one make the inner margin alternate
> >from even to odd pages.
>
> Same way you do it in plain TeX. ie there is nothing special
> about pdftex in this respect. I have no idea what the answer
> is, mind you! I presume Knuth's excellent book "The TeXbook"
> covers this situation? I have always found it very helpful
> with regard to problems about his
> macro set.
>
> Sebastian

Guy Worthington put me on the right track. The answer is 
embarassingly simple. I can use the footline routine to change 
the margins but the changed quantity must be made global in 
nature.  The internals of pdftex are still a bit of a mystery to 
me so I used \pdfhorigin rather than the plain TeX \hoffset as 
the quantity to be changed. Here are the settings and the macro:
\pdfpagewidth=4.25in
\pdfhorigin=.5in
\hsize=3.25in
...
\footline={
\ifodd\pageno \global\pdfhorigin=.60in\else\global
\pdfhorigin=.40in\fi}

This affects the current page and gives me the additional inner 
margin I need.  I found it best not to try to mix \hoffset and 
\pdfpagewidth statements in the same file. 

John Culleton
Able Typesetters and Indexers
http://wexfordpress.com



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