[texhax] LaTeX Pagination Reversed

[Steve Peter]

On Apr 8, 2006, at 4:43 PM, Philip TAYLOR wrote:

> ... the wide-outer, narrow-inner, is (I am told) an American  
> convention which exists because Americans love to write in the  
> margins (whilst we  British are taught never to write in our
> textbooks).

Nonsense. Look at the Gutenberg bible's outer margin. This goes back  
long before Americans. (And there were plenty of people writing  
marginalia long before the Americans, too.)

The notion is that, when a spread is open, there will be three equal  
ribbons of white with the text block in between. To get the "ribbons"  
to be equal, the inner margin must be half of the outer margin, since  
the inner margins will butt against each other in the spread.

For reference, take a look at chapter 2 of the excellent manual for  
the memoir class (available on CTAN).

Steve