Scripting a TeX document - (or other way to number pdf pages)

Tue Apr 13 23:59:40 UTC 2010

----- "Aart Koelewijn" <aart at mtack.xs4all.nl> wrote:

> On Tue, 13 Apr 2010 18:00:09 +0000, p.echols wrote:
> 
> > 
> > Actually, that is exactly what I was looking for, someone to tell
> me
> > that the idea is not in the "realm of realistic" and not to go
> there!
> > 
> > My limited understanding of LaTeX is that you create a source file
> that
> > has both text and markup.  That file is then interpreted when
> printed. 
> > Would it be in the realm of realistic for someone such as yourself
> to
> > identify the segments that would have to be in a script to do such
> a
> > thing?  My analogy in "fake" html would be
> > 
> > <document>
> > <head>
> > -Format code
> > -Font Code
> > -etc
> > </head>
> > <text position=bottom-left>
> > Page Number 0001
> > </text>
> > <pagebreak><text position=bottom-left> Page Number 0002
> > </text>
> > <pagebreak><text position=bottom-left> Page Number 0003
> > </text>
> > </document>
> > 
> > (For the critics, I am not good at html, but I know this is wrong,
> and
> > why and that's not the point)
> > 
> > The changing parts in such a page would be few, and the result
> easily
> > scriptable.  For my purposes, I would not have to understand the
> LaTeX
> > code for it to work.  Something you might think of as a fun
> challenge?
> > 
> 
> I once did almost all my textwriting with LaTeX, but have hardly used
> it 
> for some time. But the nice thing about LaTeX is, that keeps lay-out
> and 
> text separated as much as possible. In that it is a bit like HTML.
> 
> Now, the first line of a LaTeX file will be something like:
> 
> \documentclass[english, dutch, a4paper, 10pt]{article}
> 
> And if you will have pagenumbers or not and where they will be is
> usually 
> part of that documentclass. You will never see pagenumbers mentioned
> in 
> your LaTeX file itself. You can change your pagesize or your fontsize
> 
> whenever you want, and then the pagenumbers will be in the new places,
> 
> automatically.

But can you explicitly give page breaks?  If so then your script could say:

* * *
echo '\documentclass [ appropriate formatting for page numbers](article)'
x=2
while [ $x -le $total_number_of_pages ]
do
echo "[page break symbol]"
x=$[$x+1]
done

* * *

Now you would have a document with no text, but a bunch of pages that would "print" blank except for the page number.  If you think that is even remotely possible, I'll try and do some reading up on it.  Thanks!