Page Layout ⇒ avoid resetting left/right when changing numbering style

[kyra]

Hi!

I've already posted this question there http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/ ... th-twoside
but it didn't get much coverage, so I'll try it here.

In about 16 houres i need to print my bachelor thesis. Everything worked great, but now I discovered a strange problem. I am using scrartcl with the twopage option to get a two sided document. Therefore the document will be formatted in an alternating series of left and right pages (as desired).

If I change the pagenumbering after the first few pages (title page, list of contents, ...) from roman to arabic the pagecounter is resetted (desired as well). However, the orientation of the page (left/right) is resetted as well. This causes problems with the print, since there are now two left pages following each other.

How can i avoid this?

[Johannes_B]

Open up a book. Odd (1,3,5) pages are always on the right side.
When changing to another page numbering, LaTeX starts from page one again, this must be a page on the right side. If it's not, it simply inserts an empty page. This behaviour is supposed to be and very good. You don't want to have page one at a left side.

Next time, please prepare a minimal example to state your problem.

Best regards

BTW: This is also a crosspost to golatex and tex.stackexchange. Please inform the guys at stackexchange of this post.

[kyra]

I don't think this is intended. Or I misunderstand it. What is the problem with having page one on the left side? here is the mwe:

Code: Select all

\documentclass[twoside]{scrartcl}
\usepackage{blindtext}

\begin{document}

\pagenumbering{Roman}
\section{right page, as it should be}
\blindtext \blindtext \blindtext 
\newpage

\section{left page, as it should be}
\blindtext \blindtext \blindtext 
\newpage

\section{right page, as it should be}
\blindtext \blindtext \blindtext 
\newpage

\pagenumbering{arabic}

\section{right page again. this should be a left page}
\blindtext \blindtext \blindtext 
\newpage

\end{document}

If I print this, there will be two right pages following each other.

[Johannes_B]

Sections in articles don't start new pages by default. The reason is simple, an article is a short document of about 10 to 20 pages, maybe longer, but with just one kind of pagination.

You want to put a \cleardoublepage in front of the pagenumbering-command.

Code: Select all

\documentclass[BCOR=70mm,% added just for better visualisation
twoside]{scrartcl}
\usepackage{blindtext}
\begin{document}
\pagenumbering{Roman}
\section{right page, as it should be}
\blindtext[3]
\newpage

\section{left page, as it should be}
\blindtext[3]
\newpage

\section{right page, as it should be}
\blindtext[3]

\cleardoublepage
%\newpage

\pagenumbering{arabic}
\section{right page again. this should be a left page}
\blindtext[3]
\newpage
\end{document}

You can click on Open in writelatex and test it out.

[kyra]

hmm ok, thanks. I'll do that. But why is it bad to have page one on the left side?

[Johannes_B]

Think about the following example. You printed your document, and in your hand is a whole bunch of paper. You staple it, so it doesn't fall apart. Where do you staple it? On the left side, so reading is easy. The titlepage you are just looking at, this is the first page (even though there might be no number) and its on the right side (recto). Take a look at the wikipedia article about Recto and verso.

When printing with real types there where two different page numbering systems, it was just easier, if for some reason the author decided to add something to the preface, making it one page longer. Every other page would have to be changed, if it wasn't for roman numerals in the beginning.
And this other block also started with a new bunch of paper, i.e. a recto page.

In times of automatic pagination, there really is no need anymore for this. But somehow, it just sticks.

Best regards