[comp.text] trivial problem???

ertem@Polya.Stanford.EDU (Tuna Ertemalp) (12/13/89)

I posted the following question about one week ago, and thought it was a
trivial problem. However, noone provided me with an answer... Is it
because the problem is so trivial that everyone thinks someone should
have replied, or is it because the problem is NP-complete and not
solvable in reasonable amount of time :-)

Have fun
Tuna

          --------------------------------------------------

From: ertem@Polya.Stanford.EDU (Tuna Ertemalp)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: twosided pages
Message-ID: <12955@polya.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 9 Dec 89 05:20:58 GMT

Probably this is a very trivial problem, but I couldn't solve it...

I have a LaTeX file of the following format:

     \documentstyle[titlepage,fullpage,twoside]{article}
     
     \begin{document}
     
     \title{{\Huge TITLE}}
     \author{Tuna Ertemalp}
     
     \date{\today}
     \maketitle
     
     \cleardoublepage
     
     \begin{center}
     {\huge CONTENTS} \\
     \end{center}
     
     blah blah
     
     \cleardoublepage
     
     blah blah
     
     \cleardoublepage
     
     blah blah
     
     \end{document}


Since I'm one of the lucky people with access to a printer with
two-sided printing capability, I want to have the output to have the
title page, an empty page (both without page numbers), and then the
rest of the pages numbered 1...n. If I don't have that blank page, the
title page and page 1 appear on two sides of the same page; hardly
what I want.

The funny thing is: I have two such files. They are equal except
the text they have instead of "blah blah". Just to confuse me, one of
them prints just the way I want, and the other not... I think this is
a problem with either dvi2ps or printer itself. I don't think LaTeX is
not deterministic. :-)

What am I to do?

Have fun
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Mr. Tuna Ertemalp        | Manzanita Park 26X      | Small things together |
| Stanford University      | Stanford University     |   form the quality,   |
| Computer Science MS      | Stanford, CA 94305, USA | But quality is not a  |
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------------------------------------------------------------------------------

jbw@unix.cis.pitt.edu (Jingbai Wang) (12/13/89)

Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: twosided pages

In article <12955@polya.Stanford.EDU> ertem@Polya.Stanford.EDU (Tuna Ertemalp) writes:
|>
|>Probably this is a very trivial problem, but I couldn't solve it...
|>
|>I have a LaTeX file of the following format:
|>
|>     \documentstyle[titlepage,fullpage,twoside]{article}
|>     
|>     \begin{document}
|>     
|>     \title{{\Huge TITLE}}
|>     \author{Tuna Ertemalp}
|>     
|>     \date{\today}
|>     \maketitle
|>     
|>     \cleardoublepage
|>     
|>     \begin{center}
|>     {\huge CONTENTS} \\
|>     \end{center}
|>     
|>     blah blah
|>     
|>     \cleardoublepage
|>     
|>     blah blah
|>     
|>     \cleardoublepage
|>     
|>     blah blah
|>     
|>     \end{document}
|>

Let's first understand what is called a twosided document:
twoside format does not have much to do whether your printer can print
two sides or not. A good book is normally in twosided format, and this 
format has the following characteristics:
 1. odd side and even side have different amount of binding margin, so that
     when binded, opposite pages won't look positioned different;
 2. main titles (such as chapter and appendix) should start on odd pages only,
    i.e., if it happens to be on an even page, leave this page blank, and 
    start on next page;
 3. page numbers and pageheading/footing are placed on different sides
    on odd and even pages, i.e., the page number on odd page is on the right
    and on even page on the left.

|>
|>Since I'm one of the lucky people with access to a printer with
|>two-sided printing capability, I want to have the output to have the

Even if you don't have a double-sided printer, you can print the document
one-sided first and ask KinKo's (in Tri-state area) to print them into two-
sided.

I designed a program called psscribe(.c) which was posted on 
comp.lang.postscript to sort such files into two files, i.e., odd-paged one
and even-paged one, and then, you can print the odd pages first, put the
printed pages back into the tray to print even pages (actually some dvi->ps
can do it internally).

|>title page, an empty page (both without page numbers), and then the

if designed right, \maketitle should automatically leave a blank page
after it without your having to \cleardoublepage

|>rest of the pages numbered 1...n. If I don't have that blank page, the
|>title page and page 1 appear on two sides of the same page; hardly
|>what I want.
|>
|>The funny thing is: I have two such files. They are equal except
|>the text they have instead of "blah blah". Just to confuse me, one of

Then, these two files are not the same. \maketitle should leave a 
blankpage behind, and \chapter should automatically start on an odd page.

|>them prints just the way I want, and the other not... I think this is
|>a problem with either dvi2ps or printer itself. I don't think LaTeX is
|>not deterministic. :-)

Sometimes when people can't figure out what is wrong, they began to blame
dvi2ps. This has nothing to do with dvi2ps.

|>
|>What am I to do?
|>

Try to understand the basic ideas first instead doing things in a hard way
and complaining loudly.

|>Have fun

Sure.


JB Wang