[pdftex] Pagination in Pdftex Manual

[Hartmut Henkel]

Hi John,

On Thu, 31 Mar 2005, John R. Culleton wrote:

> The front cover of the referenced manual is actually an added page
> from a separate pdf file.  As a result the page numbering is thrown
> off. The verso of the tipped in page is still number 1 so that from
> there on the odds are verso and the evens are recto.

interesting. I print on a duplex printer and have the following stack
out:

sheet 1 recto = front cover = top: PDF code
sheet 1 verso: "The pdfTeX user manual", authors, date...
sheet 2 recto: contents, intro = page 1

An intro on recto page 1 looks ok for me. Maybe ugly is that the page
with the authors is verso. This could be remedied by a blank page after
the front cover and a blank page after the page with authors and date. I
think basically 2 blank pages are missing (but i'm no publishing
specialist at all).

I thought that this a working document, printed, annotated, spilled with
coffee, Cabernet, and ash, thrown away, printed again,... and having
blank pages just costs money. In this sense already the GNU FDL is too
much for me. But it seems that's the paper price one pays for freedom.
Any idea whether a shorter FDL form would do as well?

> Since the manual is produced via Context the simplest solution would
> seem to be \setupagenumber{number=2} on the verso page somewhere.

Then the intro would be on page 3 here, right? An improvement?

> Why this little nitpick? Well the manual is seen by many publishing
> professionals and needs to follow convention. And when it is printed
> out duplex via Acrobat Reader it is comforting if the "odd" pages have
> odd numbers. The present situation is, well, odd.

So the price for convention would be 2 blank pages? (and the lines are
too long, btw :-) I'm a little hesitant.

Regards, Hartmut