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In a .pdf document, the first page is usually not a "cover" in any
meaningful sense. Instead, comparing it with a printed volume, it
would normally be a "title page." When it is printed, it is what is
known as "self covered"--meaning the title page is also the cover.
Thus, .pdf process and printed manual traditions should be the same.
In traditional documents, wherein the front matter was usually
numbered separately (usually using Roman numerals), the title page was
often assigned the first page number but was usually not numbered
physically.
I have seen a few documents that ship as .pdf files that actually had
covers--but in most cases, the covers were separate files
entirely--since they were designed to be printed in color and joined
with the black and white contents upon assembly.
Strictly speaking, a "cover" should be more durable than the content
pages need to be, extending the life of the document as the cover
takes more of the rough handling than the interior does. That is why
to a printer paper that is "cover stock" is heavier than text stock.
In fact, business cards are printed on this "cover stock", which is
simply cut down to the desired size.
In business, as you know, with high-volume computer printers and
copying machines so ubiquitous, various kinds of reports are printed
as self-covered publications, title pages in front. This is as often
as not because it is simply so much easier to hit the "print"
button--and because most of these are not considered necessarily
permanent. If one is damaged, it is simply reprinted--and, in most
cases, it would have been changed in some way so the reprinted version
is more current.
Books, on the other hand, originated in a time when they were much
more rare and considered permanent. For such a possession, protecting
the manuscript was considered important--so heavy covers were created
to serve a utilitarian function. Because books were so valuable, the
covers were often heavily ornamented as a reflection of that value.
David
>
>
>
> On 8/15/05, Juliet Adlington <Juliet -dot- Adlington -at- reuters -dot- com> wrote:
> >
> > Very good point - I'd forgotten how annoying it is when you get the
> > wrong batch of pages out of the printer!
> >
> > Juliet
> >
> >
> > Since we ship all our doc as PDF files, I now number everything starting
> > from the very first page - the cover. Even though I don't display a page
> > number, I include it in the sequencing. The reason is that my page
> > numbers then line up with the page numbers of the PDF (in Acrobat).
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