Exporting a Hebrew Book to PDF — Page Order Reversed

david614 · May 30, 2025, 8:14am

Hello,

First of all, thank you to the LibreOffice team and community for this excellent software. I’m currently using LibreOffice to prepare a Hebrew book, with right-to-left page layout. Everything works quite well while editing — I can set right-to-left text, mirror page layouts, and even handle bilingual formatting with Hebrew on right pages and translation on the left.

However, when I export the document to PDF, the reading order is reversed. Instead of the first content page appearing on the left (as it would in a Hebrew book), it shows up on the right, following the left-to-right Western standard. As a result, the final PDF doesn’t match the expected layout of a Hebrew publication.

Is there a way to export a PDF from LibreOffice with a proper right-to-left page flow — i.e., first page on the left, second on the right, and so on?

If not directly within LibreOffice, are there any workarounds or settings (possibly in the PDF export options) that could help achieve this?

Thank you very much in advance for any guidance!

Best regards,
David

fpy · May 30, 2025, 9:18am

long story; 160686 – "Left Page" and "Right Page" are nonsensical and should be removed

ajlittoz · May 30, 2025, 9:21am

I am curious about how you structured your Writer document. Can you attach a sample with at most 10 pages (drop title page if needed, I am ony interested in text and translation in opposite pages)?

david614 · May 30, 2025, 10:47am

Here is an excerpt.

Volume test.odt (93.5 KB)

ajlittoz · May 30, 2025, 11:59am

Thanks. I see you resorted to “manually-forced” page alternation. But it does not fully segregate French and Hebrew notes (I should rather write xxx-language-related notes) on their own pages. When page break occurs in the middle of a paragraph, this logically unique paragraph is broken into two ones. This is a breach in semantics and also you have to manually manage the shift in its location when you edit your text.

In addition you have a lot of direct formatting. Everything seems to be Body Text+direct formatting. You even have faulty Default Paragraph Style intermixed with Body Text in your Hebrew text. Too many empty paragraphs for vertical spacing both in text and notes.

I don’t understand why you inserted frames at start of chapters. You couold have done that with a specific paragraph style (eliminating an occurrence of direct formatting) with a border. Frames are a nuisance (and a nightmare to control predictably – for beginners and even confirmed users). They impact performance when their count grows. So the fewer frames, the better. Zero frames is the best case.

Your chapter headings (Roman numbers) should be styled properly (e.g. using Heading n), allowing automatic numbering. In which case, the “duplicate” number in the other language is synchronised with a field.

Why do you number manually your pages?

I think this kind of work should be handled with a DTP (desktop publishing program) where you can manage more comfortably two text streams. Scribus is such a FOSS application.

Back at your question, after a few experimentations.

You have added an empty page with manual writing direction override, apparently to force the first page on left. But you have used a single page style, valid both on left and right side. This means there is no automatically inserted pages. When you convert to PDF, Writer sees a continuous sequence of pages without “holes”. Consequently pages are emitted without “holes” either.

The solution might be to have 2 page styles, like Left Page and Right Page (you can customise them or create similar ones with French and Hebrew names), constrained on a single side. Anyway, you manage manually the alternation, so this not a big deal.

You’ll then get “automatically inserted blank pages” which you can take into account when you export to PDF. You’ll probably have to manage specially the phantom second cover page.

There is also a limitation in Writer which induces a penalty in RTL documents (unless it has been fixed recently): odd pages are hard-coded to right side (even on left side).