[texhax] Reverse page numbering (begin with the last page number and end with 0)

[Reinhard Kotucha]

On 31 December 2009 Othmane Benkirane wrote: 

> The subject explains everything: I want to start the page numbering
> from the last page number and decrement it until it's 0 (for the
> last page). A mathematical operation for this would be: \thepage -
> \pageref{LastPage}, but how to include it in fancyhdr (for a book
> class) ?

\thepage - \pageref{LastPage} gives negative page numbers.  If this is
ok for you, try, for instance, \setcounter{page}{-123} in the
preamble.

Don't rely on \pageref{LastPage}.  Its value depends on the initial
setting of the page counter and you'll get different results after
each run.

If you want to determine the number of pages of your document
automatically, then you should create a dedicated counter yourself.  
You probably can can increase it using \everyshipout from the everyshi
package and finally write the number to a file.  I didn't test it.

If you are familiar with a programming language, you could simply
evaluate the log file and search for the line 

   "Output written on foo.pdf (123 pages, 123456 bytes)"

and create a file which contains the string "\setcounter{page}{-123}".
You then have to \input the file in the preamble.

But in most cases it should be sufficient to initialize the page counter
manually. 

Regards,
  Reinhard

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