"negative" page numbers?

Question

I had a PTXPrint job where I had a PDF file of cover, blank back of cover, title and credit pages that I included as a front matter PDF, and PTXPrint counted all of those pages when it was deciding what page numbers to use for the text. So in other words, it counted the cover and the blank back of cover as pages 1 and 2, the title and credits pages as 3 and 4, so it started the text on page 5. Counting the cover and back of cover is not what you would want. But the only place I found to adjust that was the Starting Page Number on the Header + Footer tab, and it would only allow the number to go as low as 1. If I have cover and back of cover in the front matter PDF, I would like to set that number to -1, but that isn’t allowed. Should it be allowed to let it be a negative number?

Answer 1

Great idea Jeff. We’ve now allowed negative numbers in the Page Number setting. And if PTXprint detects a negative number it will have roman numerals for all the intro books UNTIL it hits the first Scripture book (GEN…REV) - and then it will start numbering from page 1. It also inserts a blank page after the roman numbered pages if needed to ensure that Page 1 starts on the RHS. This will all be in 1.5.6 - hopefully released in a few hours…

Answer 2

Super! Looking forward to having it…

Answer 3

Just so you know… The page after -1 (printed i) is -2 (printed ii).
If you need upper case Roman numerals, then you can change the relevant bit of the header/footer to \uppercase{\pagenumber}

Answer 4

Is there any way to get Roman numerals for the introduction of an individual Bible book? For one print job we would like to use Roman numerals for the page of the introduction (the intro that is produced from the intro text in Paratext), and then when the actual Bible text starts, we’d like it to start with page 1.

Comments

Do you mean you’d do this for each individual book? So it’d go 23, 24, 25, i, ii, iii, 1, 2, 3?
You could, but it’s going to confuse the table of contents no end!

Answer 5

Well, in fact, it’s only a single book that is being published… So I’m wondering if PTXprint has a way to use Roman numerals for that one intro, before it starts using page 1 for the actual text after the intro. May not be the best way to do this, but if there is an easy way to do that, I’d be interested in knowing how.

Comments

Hmm. I assume the book introduction is in the 01GENproject.SFM file? If it were in the INT book, then you could try to pull it in beforehand.

\zgetperiph|INTGEN\*

I think that would work, but it’s not guaranteed.
Otherwise… you’ll need to manually keep track of page numbers, because the control file that python generates has already reset the page number to 1, just before the sfm file gets read.
But if you accept that shortcoming, you could then use hooks to manually reset it, something like:

\setbookhook{start}{GEN}{\pageno=-5}
\setcvhook{GEN1.1}{\pageno=1}

Now you just have the following problems:

1. If your title, introduction, the. ends up with an odd number of pages, you will need to force a blank page. \zNeedOddPage is probably your friend here.
2. you’d need to suppress the automatic blank page before scripture (peripherals tab).
   
3. you probably need to turn on ‘start new book on the same page’ or whatever it’s called.

If you’re really keen on working on a general solution, I’ve just pushed a half-baked work-around for preserving the introduction’s page number in \oldpageno