Asymmetrical layout in two-sided document

Question

I use two-sided document mode in Book class KOMA Script. It works well in the sense that the ToC, chapters, titles starts from the odd pages. Exactly we I need in a book.

In a recent book I need to have asymmetrical text blocks in one spread—aligned to the left—in order to accommodate the margin notes to the right, and yet I want the beginning of the book (intro, ToC etc.) and the colophon to have a symmetrical layout.

Since the two-sided mode defines the margins as inside---outside, which is a symmetrical layout through the spine, how can I have an asymmetrical margins in the two-sided mode?

The second question is, how can I turn back to symmetrical margins for some particular pages?

Answer 1

To make chapters start on odd pages without switching page margins between even/odd pages, use the KOMA-Script class option twoside=semi. To change the margins within the document, use the geometry package and its \newgeometry macro. In the following example, I mimic KOMA-Script' s settings at the start (in particular, I use a textblock scale of 0.7) and then change the horizontal scale to 0.6 and the horizontal margin ratio to 3:5 so that the left margin is kept constant (15% of the page width, contrary to 25% for the right margin).

\documentclass[twoside=semi]{scrbook}

\renewcommand*{\raggedsection}{\centering}

\usepackage[scale=0.7,heightrounded,hcentering,vmarginratio={1:2}]{geometry}

\usepackage{lipsum}

\begin{document}

\chapter*{Intro}

\lipsum[1-4]

\cleardoublepage
\newgeometry{hscale=0.6,vscale=0.7,heightrounded,hmarginratio={3:5},vmarginratio={1:2}}

\chapter{First}

Some text.\marginpar{Some text in the margin.}

\lipsum[5-12]

\end{document}