Page numbers in page descriptions

[passpub]

This is a small, noncritical matter, but it still bugs me.

I work mainly on books.  These books always start with introductory matter that's numbered using lower-case roman numerals, followed by the main portion of the book that's numbered using Arabic numerals starting with 1.

If I print the book to Adobe PDF and specify inclusion of the page descriptions, the page numbers in the descriptions are printed correctly.  But if I export the book to PDF instead (as most print shops require), the page numbers printed in the descriptions are all Arabic: 1 through "n" for the front matter, and 1 through "n" for the main text.

Why the difference?  Is there any way to fix this?

[Mike Witherell]

"specify inclusion of the page descriptions"

What does that mean?

[passpub]

I meant "page information," not "page description"; my apologies.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

As Mike asks, what 'descriptions'? I just looked at a PDF of a book, and the page counter in the top ribbon starts at "i (1 of 172)" and goes up in roman lowercase until it hits "1 (11 of 172)"... so the descriptions I'm looking at follow the assigned page numbers.

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[passpub]

My mistake. I should have said "page information" instead of "page
description."

The option to include page information is in the Marks and Bleeds section
of the Print dialogue.

[image: Print dialogue.png]

Here's what happens when I use the Print command.

[image: Example P.jpg]

The folio and the page information match. But when I use the Export
command:

[image: Example E.jpg]

the numbers do not match.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Oh, okay. Yes, same book I mentioned numbers pages 1-10, then starts over with 1 again.

This could just be an oversight in the way ID identifies pages on export, or it could be deliberate for a number of murky reasons. You could always put in a feature request to have it changed and use the native page numbering in this slug.

On the other hand, it's not really wrong information, and the actual page number is very likely within the page image itself, should there be any confusion.

And on the third hand, it's less and less common to export pages with crop marks. Most modern printers accept print-size page images in PDF and manage the layout from there, even with bleeds. Crops, bleeds, reg marks and page info are... increasingly obsolete.

But it's an interesting anomaly, all the same. 🙂

And ETA: It ignores section prefixes, which I find a bit surprising. I can't quite figure out why the export would note/honor sections but ignore all but a simple page numbering scheme.

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[passpub]

Yes, as I said, a small, noncritical problem.

All you said is correct, except that books do have blank pages with no
folios on them, and it's quite possible, for instance, to have a page ii
and a page 2 that are both blank and nevertheless are labeled identically
in the page information.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

I can't imagine the project consequences of accidentally swapping two blank pages. 😐

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