Re: PDF Version - Page Numbers Incorrect

[Eduardo A . Bustamante López]

On Sat, Oct 14, 2017 at 09:25:26PM -0400, Josh Blagden wrote:
> Hi GNUs,  
> 
>     The page numbers in the Table of Contents are incorrect. For
> example, section 3.2.6, titled "GNU Parallel" is on page 21, not page
> 22. Also, section 3.6, titled "Redirections" is on page 38, not page 32.
> I assume that this is merely due to the author making additions to the
> manual without correcting the page numbers in the PDF.

Hi Josh,

I'm guessing you're talking about the Bash reference manual. What source file 
are you using? I'm looking at:
<https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/bash.pdf>, and the TOC lists 3.2.6 in 
page 15, and 3.6 is listed as being in
page 32. I see that both sections begin in the advertised page number.

I also checked against the `devel' branch in git, by running:

$ ./configure --silent && make -s -C doc/ bashref.pdf

(NOTE: you need the `texinfo' and `texlive' packages to be able to generate the 
PDF file from source).

In the generated file (doc/bashref.pdf), 3.2.6 is listed in page 16, and 3.6 in 
page 33. Both indicate the correct page
number.


By the way, are you checking against the page number in the page header, or the 
"PDF page number"? I noticed that the
PDF page number doesn't match the page number in the page header, which seems 
to be a limitation of the tool used to
generate the file (i.e. texi2dvi). In both cases (bash.pdf from www.gnu.org and 
doc/bashref.pdf), the PDF page number is
offset by a constant factor of +6 (i.e. PDF's pg. 22 is doc's pg. 16; PDF's pg. 
38 is doc's pg. 32).

I read 
<https://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/manual/texinfo/texinfo.html#PDF-Output>, 
but I don't see any mention of an
option to control the page number offset described above.

Looking around, I see that this is a common problem where the logical page 
number doesn't match the PDF physical page
number. It seems there are some PDF readers that allow you to switch between 
page numbering schemes [1]. Sadly, the ones
I've tried (evince: libevdocument3.so.4, libevview3.so.3; xpdf: 
libpoppler.so.68 [2], firefox: pdf.js). If this is the
problem you're seeing, I don't think there's a solution, other than using a PDF 
reader that supports using logical page
numbers.


[1] <http://www.adobepress.com/articles/article.asp?p=1998556&seqNum=4>
[2] <https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=301085>

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