Hi, making a book in Google Docs or LibreOffice is limited by the fact that the page numbering system is very primitive. I think a lot of people who want to make books run into this problem and give up because they can’t get their book to look exactly as they want it. You have to use bookmaking software and chances are it’s arcane and going to break your document
If you have front matter that you don’t want numbered on Google Docs, you’re pretty much out of luck. You can only skip the first page for numbering. You can’t edit individual page numbers or make alternating page adjustments (having the page number appear on opposite sites of the footer to deal with the book’s gutter).
If you have front matter and you’re using Libre Writer, it’s a cryptic and convoluted process. You have to go into Paragraph and then Text Flow and muddy about with page styles. Libre Writer also can’t seem to handle back matter, and the only solution that I could come up with is hiding the page numbers with white shapes, which doesn’t translate well to EPUB.
There are supposedly ways to achieve a better result, but I haven’t been able to find anything – the tutorials talk about covering page numbers with shapes and making the front matter into title pages (which doesn’t sound right). If you have sections in the middle part of the book that you don’t want numbered, or want to reset or continue the numbering at different times, that sounds like a nightmare.
Can you please implement a simple numbering feature where you can choose the pages you want to be numbered and set the numbering system? Just a little timeline where you choose the section and the numbering system / options.
I had more diagrams but new users are only allowed to post one image.
This is all I need to finish my book and not have it ruined by a different software system. Thank you.