[Tex/LaTex] Page numbering and binding offset

double-sidedmarginspage-numbering

I have a two-sided document with a few unnumbered introductory pages, and I want to start page numbering from 1 after these pages. To do that, I suppress page numbers with \pagenumbering{gobble}, and later start it with \pagenumbering{arabic}. However, this method screws up page numbering for things like fancyhdr and geometry's bindingoffset. As to the headers, I can easily circumvent that by swapping around the headers for odd/even pages, but I see no way of making bindingoffset work with it.

Is there a way to make bindingoffset use global page numbers for the whole document instead of the counter that LaTeX uses for \pagenumbering? If not, is there a better way to suppress and later start page numbering without messing up bindingoffset?

Thank you.

Minimal working example:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[twoside, bindingoffset=5mm]{geometry}
\usepackage{lipsum}

\begin{document}
\pagenumbering{gobble}
\lipsum[1-4]
\clearpage
\pagenumbering{arabic}
\lipsum[1-4]

\end{document}

I would like the second page (page number 1) to be correctly treated as a left page.

Best Answer

In a twosided document, you need to tell LaTeX not only to clear a single page (\clearpage), but to clear a double page if necessary (\cleardoublepage).

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[twoside, bindingoffset=5mm]{geometry}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\usepackage{showframe}

\begin{document}
\pagenumbering{gobble}
\lipsum[1-4]
\cleardoublepage
\pagenumbering{arabic}
\lipsum[1-4]

\end{document}

Please be aware, that an odd page in books is always on right handed pages, whereas even pages are on left handed pages. Using the book class, you could also use \frontmatter and \mainmatter. There are historical reasons for that. But in modern times using computers to typeset, there is really no need for different paginations anymore.

Since an article usually is a short document, I advice you to channge the documentclass.

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