General ⇒ PDF page numbers don't match TeX-generated ones

[kaiserkarl13]

When you create a document that has pages that don't start at 1 (for example, many books number the table of contents and other frontmatter using Roman numerals and then start Chapter 1 on page 1), the page number in the PDF viewer doesn't match the page number in the actual PDF. This makes it very difficult to navigate the table of contents (which uses book-style numbers) from the PDF viewer (which uses real page numbers, starting from 1).

It's possible to change the starting page number in Acrobat (I've never done this, but I've seen files that must have done it...); is it possible to specify the PDF start page using LaTeX's machinery? If not, is there a solution using some GNU utility that effectively does the same thing?

[Stefan Kottwitz]

Hi,

just look into the hyperref manual. 3.6 PDF display and information options should give useful information (pdfstartpage, pdfpagelabels).

Stefan

[kaiserkarl13]

I appreciate the very helpful suggestion; I've been working with the hyperref package for a while now, and I still can't get it to work with the particular document class I'm using. I did, however, get it to work with the standard report class, so there is hope. I have two questions:

First, is it possible to use something akin to the pdfpagelabels option of the hyperref package WITHOUT creating internal links? More specifically, is it possible to use this without using the hyperref package at all?

Second, is there any machinery to set PDF options such as start page AFTER the document has already been processed? There are some files that start on odd page numbers that I don't have the source for, and I'm curious if the soft page numbers can be changed (assuming the PDF is alterable, at least).

Thank you!

[kaiserkarl13]

I realized I never followed up with this post (my first on this forum!) when I finally found a working answer:

Code: Select all

\usepackage[pdfpagelabels,draft,implicit=false]{hyperref}

The argument "draft" turns off hyperlinks (which aren't allowed in this particular document), and "implicit=false" causes hyperref to NOT redefine the LaTeX internals (which was necessary, as this document class needed to subsequently re-redefine those internals).